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1 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 



PERCY H. BOYNTON 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 

AUTHOR OF "principles OF COMPOSITION," "LONDON IN ENGLISH 
LITERATURE," EDITOR OF "AMERICAN POETRY" 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON . NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



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COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY PERCY H. BOYNTON a. 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

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? PREFACE 

The general purpose in the preparationi of this book has 
been to eliminate negligible detail and to subordinate or omit 
authors of minor importance in order to stress the men and 
the movements that are most significant in American intel- 
lectual history. The book has therefore been written with a 
view to showing the drift of American thought as illustrated 
by major writers or groups and as revealed by a careful study 
of one or two cardinal works by each. In this sequence of 
thought the growth of American self-consciousness and the 
changing ideals of American patriotism have been kept in 
mind throughout. The attempt is made to induce study of 
representative classics and extensive reading of the American 
literature which illuminates the past of the country — chiefly, 
of course, in reminiscent fiction, drama, and poetry. 

As an aid to the student, there are appended to each chapter 
(except the last three) topics and problems for study, and book 
lists which summarize the output of each man, indicate available 
editions, and point to the critical material which may be used 
as a supplement, but not as a substitute, for first-hand study, 
I This critical material has been selected with a view, also, to 
suggesting books which might reasonably be included in libra- 
ries of normal schools and colleges, as well as in universities. 

As further aids to the student, there have been included 
two maps, three chronological charts, and, in an appendix, a 
brief characterization of the American periodicals which have 
been most significant in stimulating American authorship by 
providing a market for fiction, poetry, and the essay. 

In the writing of the book the author's chief obligation 
has naturally been to the many university classes who have 



iv A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

stimulated its preparation, not only by their attention but by their 
free discussion. Special acknowledgment is gratefully made 
to Mr. William W. Ellsworth for a careful reading of all the 
manuscript and to Miss Marie Gulbransen for the initial work 
in formulating the appendix on the American magazines. 

Acknowledgment is due to the publishers of The Nation 
and The New Republic for portions of the chapters on 
Crevecoeur, the Poetry of the Revolution, Emerson, Lowell, 
Whitman, Sill, and Miller, which originally appeared in these 
weeklies. 

PERCY H. BOYNTON 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Skventeenth Century i 

II. The Earliest Verse 17 

III. The Transition to the Eighteenth Century . . 27 

IV. Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin . , . 41 

V. CRfeVECCEUR, the "AMERICAN FARMER " 59 

VI. The Poetry of the Revolution and Philip Freneau 69 

VII. The Early Drama 89 

VIII. Charles Brockden Brown 100 

IX. Irving and the Knickerbocker School .... no 

X. James Fenimore Cooper 141 

^— XI. William Cullen Bryant 158 

XII. Edgar Allan Poe 173 

XIII. The Transcendent alists 190 

XIV. Ralph Waldo Emerson 199 

XV. Henry David Thoreau 221 

XVI. Nathaniel Hawthorne 236 

XVII. John Greenleaf Whittier 252 

XVIII. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 267 

XIX. James Russell Lowell 282 

XX. Harriet Beecher Stowe 299 

XXI. Oliver Wendell Holmes 310 

XXII. Some Metropolitan Poets 324 

XXIII. The Poetry of the South 343 

XXIV. Walt Whitman 362 

XXV. The West and Mark Twain 380 

XXVI. The West in Sill and Miller . 396 

XXVII. The Rise of Fiction; William Dean Howells . .411 

XXVIII. Contemporary Drama 437 

XXIX. The Later Poetry 453 

INDEX TO LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 487 

INDEX 503 



A HISTORY OF AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 

THE COLONIAL PERIOD 

CHAPTER I 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

In its beginnings American literature differs from the litera- 
tures of most other great nations ; it was a transplanted thing. 
It sprang in a way like Minerva, full-armed from the head of 
Jove, — Jove in this case being England, and the armor being 
the heritage which the average American colonist had secured 
in England before he crossed the Atlantic. In contrast, Greek, 
Roman, French, German, English, and the other less familiar 
literatures can all be more or less successfully traced back to 
primitive conditions. Their early life was interwoven with the 
growth of the language and the progress of a rude civilization, 
and their earliest products which have come down to us were 
not results of authorship as we know it to-day. They were 
either folk poetry, composed perhaps and certainly enjoyed by 
the people in groups and accompanied by group singing and 
dancing, — like the psalms and the simpler ballads, — or they 
were the record of folk tradition, slowly and variously developed 
through generations and finally collected into a continuous 
story like the Iliad, the ^neid, the " Song of Roland," 
the " Nibelungenlied," and " Beowulf." They were composed 
by word of mouth and not reduced to writing for years or 



2 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

generations, and they were not put into print until centuries 
after they were current in speech or transcribed by monks 
and scholars. 

The one great story-poem of this sort in American literature 
is the " Song of Hiawatha," but this is the story of a con- 
quered and vanishing race ; it has nothing basic to do with the 
Americans of to-day ; it is far less related to them than the 
earlier epics of the older European nations to whom we trace 
our ancestry. Except for a few place-names even the language 
of America owes nothing to that of the Indians, for the Eng- 
lish tongue is a compound of Greek and Latin and French 
and German. Our literary beginnings, then, go back to two 
groups of educated English colonists, or immigrants, and our 
knowledge of them to conditions in the divided England from 
which they first came to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 and to 
Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. 

The English of the early seventeenth century were an eager, 
restless, driving people. The splendid reign of Queen Elizabeth 
was just past. The country was secure from foreign enemies 
and confident in its strength. Great naval leaders had brought 
new honors to her name ; great explorers had planted her flag 
on mysterious and new-discovered coasts ; a group of dramatists 
had made the theater as popular as the moving-picture house 
of to-day ; a great architect was adorning London with his 
churches ; poets and novelists, preachers and statesmen, scien- 
tists and scholars, were all working vividly and keenly. There 
was an active enthusiasm for the day's doings, a kind of living 
assent to Hamlet's commentary, on "this goodly frame, the 
earth, . . . this most excellent canopy, the air, . . . this brave 
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden 
fire " ; and to the exclamation that follows : " What a piece of 
work is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in 
form and moving, how express and admirable ! in action, how 
like an angel ! in apprehension, how like a god ! the beauty of 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 3 

the world ! the paragon of animals ! " And under a strong and 
tactful monarch the nation had been kept at peace with itself. 

Yet in this fallow soil the seeds of controversy had been 
steadily taking root ; and when Elizabeth wa5 followed on the 
throne by the vain and unregal James I, the crop turned out 
to be a harvest of dragons' teeth. Puritan democrats and cava- 
lier Royalists fought with each other over the body of England 
till it was prostrate and helpless. What followed was the rise 
of Puritan power, culminating with the execution of Charles II 
and the establishment of the Commonwealth under the Crom- 
wells from 1649 to 1660, and the peaceful restoration of mon- 
archy at the latter date. It was during the mid-stages of these 
developments that the first settlements were made in English 
America. Both factions included large numbers of vigorous 
individuals of the pioneer type. The Puritans were technically 
called " dissenters " and " nonconformists " because of their 
attitude toward the established Church of England ; but the 
Royalists who came over to America were simply non- 
conformists of another type who preferred doing things out 
on the frontier to living conventional lives at home. 

The Royalists, who settled in the South, came away, like 
other travelers and explorers of their day, to settle new English 
territory as a landed aristocracy. They were a mixed lot, but 
on the whole they were not an irreligious lot. They believed 
in the established church as they did in the established govern- 
ment, and they persecuted with a good will those who tried 
to follow other forms of worship than their own. They were, 
however, chiefly fortune hunters, just as were the men who 
surged out to California in 1849 or those who went to Alaska 
fifty years later ; they hoped to make their money in the west 
and to spend it back in the east, and they had little thought 
of literature, either as a thing to enjoy or as a thing to create. 
When they wrote they did so to give information about the 
country, the Indians, and the new conditions of living, or to keep 
in touch with relatives, legal authorities, or sources of money 



4 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

supply ; and always they had in mind the thought of attracting 
new settlers, for they needed labor more than anything else. 
They made no attempt at general education, adopting the now- 
abandoned aristocratic theory that too much knowledge would 
be a dangerous source of discontent among the working people. 
Some few individuals wrote accounts and descriptions that are 
interesting to the modern reader, but these were not representa- 
tive of the people as a whole. They were Englishmen away 
from home, living temporarily in Virgin-iz. (the province of the 
virgin queen, Elizabeth), in James-tov^rv, in the Carolmas 
(from the Latin for Charles), in MaryAzxi^, and, even as late 
as 1722, in George-\2..j^ 

The nonconformists whom adverse winds drove to the North 
in 1620 were a very different folk. They were predominantly 
Puritan in prejudice and in upbringing. Many of their leaders 
were graduates of Cambridge University who had gone into 
the Church of England, only to be driven out of it because 
of their unorthodox preaching — born leaders who were brave 
enough to risk comfort and safety for conscience' sake. They 
came over to America in order, as Mrs. Hemans put it, to have 
"freedom to worship God,"' but not to give this freedom to 
others. They had endured so much for their religious faith 
that they wanted a place where this, and this only, should be 
tolerated. So they became, not illogically, the fiercest kind of 
persecutors, practicing with a vengeance the lessons in oppres- 
sion that they had learned in England at the cost of blood 
and suffering. They settled in compact towns where they 
could believe and worship together; they put up "meeting- 
houses " where they could listen to the preacher on the Lord's 
Day and where they could transact public business, with the 
same man as "moderator," on week days. He was the con- 
trolling power — " pastor," or shepherd, and "dominie," or 
master, of the community. And when the meetinghouses 
were finished, the settlers erected as their next public buildings 
the schoolhouses, where the children might learn to read the 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 5 

Scriptures so that they could " foil the ould deluder, Satan." 
Education became compulsory as well as public. The Puritans' 
place-names were Indian — Massachusetts and Agawam ; derived 
from England of Puritan associations, like Boston, Plymouth, 
and Falmouth ; or quaintly Scriptural, like Marthas Vineyard, 
Providence, and Salem. These people, unlike the settlers in 
the South, came over to live and die here. They wrote for the 
same social and business reasons that the Virginians did, but 
they also wrote much about their religion, compiled the " Bay 
Psalm Book," published sermons, and recorded their struggles, 
which began very early and were doomed to final failure, to 
keep their New England free from "divers religions." At first 
their writings were sent to England for publication, but before 
long, in 1638, they had their own printing press, and the 
things that were printed on it were not so much the sayings 
of individual men as the opinions of the community. 

The history of the migrations to the North and to the South 
during the seventeenth century is one with the history of the 
civil struggle in England. Up to 1640 colonization was slow 
and consistent at both points. From 1640 to 1660 it increased 
rapidly in the South and declined in the North, for in those 
years the grip of the Puritans on the old country relieved them 
from persecution there and from the consequent need to avoid 
it and, at the same time, made many Royalists glad of a chance 
to escape to some more peaceful spot. From 1660 on, with 
the return of the Royalists to power in England, Puritan 
migration was once more started to the North, and the home 
country was again secure for the followers of the king. But 
the real characters of the two districts were unchanged. 
They were firmly established in the earliest years, and they 
have persisted during the intervening centuries clear up to 
the present time. The America of to-day is a compound 
whose basic native qualities are inherited from the oldest tradi- 
tions of aristocratic Virginia and the oldest traits of democratic 
and Puritan Massachusetts. 



6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In dealing with the early periods of any literature the 
exercise of artistic judgment is always very charitable. Rough, 
uncouth, fragmentary pieces are taken into account because 
they serve as a bridge to the remoter past. Harsh critics 
of colonial American literature seem to forget this practice 
when they rule out of court everything produced in this coun- 
try before the days of Irving and Cooper. A great deal of the 
earlier writing should, of course, be considered only as source 
material for the historian ; but some of it has the same claim 
to attention as the old chronicles, plays, and ballads in English 
literary history. It deserves study if it portrays or criticizes or 
even unconsciously reflects the life and thought of the times, 
and it is significant as an American product if in form 
or content or point of view it clearly belongs to this side of 
the Atlantic. 

The nature of settlement and the neglect of popular education 
led to an early lapse in authorship in the Southern colonies, so 
that in a survey as brief as this chapter their writers do not 
come into view until they find expression in the oratory and 
statesmanship of the Revolutionary period. Their narratives 
and descriptions of colonial life, as long as they wrote them 
at all, were quite like most of the earliest Northern writings 
of the sort. The one outstanding difference is that in what- 
ever they wrote, the religious motive for settlement and the 
belief in a personal Providence were less insistently recorded 
than by the Puritans. Thus where John Smith was content 
with the general phrase " it pleased God," Anthony Thacher, 
saved from shipwreck in Boston Harbor, wrote devoutly, " the 
Lord directed my toes into a crevice in the rock " ; and where 
Smith's companions hoped for the benevolent favor of the Most 
High, Thacher's fellow-worshipers were perfectly certain that 
every step they took was ordained by God, so that even their 
apparent misfortunes were His punishments for misconduct. 

In all the great mass of Puritan writing in the first century 
of residence in America one definite current appears, and that 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 7 

is the quiet but irresistible current of change in human thought. 
The Puritans had made the profound but constantly repeated 
mistake of assuming that after thousands of years of groping 
by mankind, they had at last discovered the " ultimate truth " ; 
that for the rest of time men need do nothing but follow the 
precepts which God had revealed to them about life here and 
life hereafter. They were, in their own serious way, happy in 
their confident possession of truth and sternly resolved to 
bestow it or, if necessary, impose it on all whom they could 
control. Their failure was recorded with their earliest attempts, 
and it came, not because of their particular weakness or the 
strength of their particular adversaries, but because they were 
trying to obstruct the progress of human thought, which is as 
inexorable as any other force of nature. They might as well 
have entered into an argument with gravitation or the tides. 
The most interesting and the best-written pieces of seventeenth- 
century New England literature all give evidence of this rear- 
guard action against the advancing forces of truth. 

The Puritanism against which this rising tide of dissent 
developed was admirably embodied in William Bradford (1590- 
1657), the Mayflower Pilgrim who was more than thirty times 
governor of his colony and the author of "A History of 
Plimouth Plantation." He was a brave, sober, devout leader 
with an abiding sense of the holy cause in which he was 
enlisted. His journal of the first year in America and his 
history are clearly and sometimes finely written, and give 
ample proof of his stalwart character — "fervent in spirit, 
serving the Lord," and free from the personal narrowness 
which is often mistakenly ascribed to all Puritans. In his 
account, for example, of the reasons for the Pilgrims' removal 
from Leyden the chronicle tells of the hardships under which 
they had lived there, the encroachments of old age, the dis- 
turbing effects of the life on the children, and, lastly, the 
great hope they entertained of advancing the chyrch of Christ 
in some remote part of the world. It recounts many of the 



8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

objections advanced against attempting settlement in America, 
and concludes : 

It was answered, that all great and honorable actions are accom- 
panied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and over- 
come with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were 
great, but not desperate ; the difficulties were many, but not invincible. 
For though there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain ; 
it might be sundry of the things feared might never befall ; others, by 
provident care and the use of good means, might in a great measure 
be prevented ; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude 
and patience, might either be borne or overcome. True it was, that 
such attempts were not to be made and undertaken without good 
ground and reason; not rashly or lightly, as many have done for 
curiosity or hope of gain, etc. But their condition was not ordinary ; 
their ends were good and honorable; their calling lawful and urgent; 
and therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding. 
Yea, though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they 
have comfort in the same, and their endeavors would be honorable. 

Unhappily this heroic trait of Puritanism was coupled with 
a desperate religious bigotry which the world is even yet slow 
to forgive. 

One of the earliest local dissenters was Tbnmas Mnrtnn^ 
(1575 ■'-1646), author of the "New English Canaan," published 
in London, 1637. It is a half-pathetic fact that this should 
stand out to-day beyond anything else written in the same 
decade in America, for the best of it — the third book — is a 
savage satire on the Puritans in Massachusetts. Morton, it is 
needless to say, was not a Puritan himself. He was a restless, 
dishonest, unscrupulous gentleman-adventurer from London 
who gave the best part of his life to fighting the Puritans on 
their own grounds. He started a fur-trading post at " Merry 
Mount," just southeast of Boston, sold the Indians liquor and 
firearms, consorted with their women, and in wanton mockery 
set up a Maypole there and taught the Indians the English 
games and dances which were particularly offensive to the 
grave residents of Plymouth and Boston. If he had not 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 9 

written his book, he would be remembered now only as one of 
the chief trouble-makers whom the Puritans had to fight down ; 
but he did them more damage with his pen than with all his 
active misbehavior. He undermined their influence by not 
treating them soberly. He made fun of their costume, derided 
their speech, ridiculed their religious formalities, and held the 
valiant Miles Standish up to scorn by nicknaming him Captain 
Shrimp. He went further, and questioned their motives and 
their honesty, their integrity in business, and their sincerity 
in religion. A great deal of what he wrote about them was 
libelously unfair ; he should never be taken as an authority 
for facts unless supported by other v^iters of his day. But 
underneath all his clever abuse of them and their ways, there 
is an evident basis of truth which is confirmed by the sober 
study of history. Although the Puritans were brave, strong, 
self-denying servants of the stern God whom they worshiped, 
they were sometimes sanctimonious, sometimes cruelly venge- 
ful, and all too often so eager to achieve His ends on earth 
that they were regardless of the means they took. At the very 
beginning of their life in America, Thomas Morton held these 
characteristics up to public scorn ; and in so doing he made 
his book an omen of the long, losing battle they were destined 
to fight. Morton's effectiveness as a writer lies in the fact that 
however ill-behaved he may have been, he was attractively — 
maybe dangerously — genial in character. He was in truth 
"a cheerful liar"; but he lied like the writer of fiction who 
disregards the exact facts because he is telling a good story as 
well as he can and because that good story is based on real life. 
The next New Englander to give proof that the Puritans 
were not having an easy time in their '' new English Canaan " 
was Nath nriirl Wnrrl (-T_V'^S Tf^^-" ^); author of "The Simple 
Cobler of Aggawam." In character and convictions he was as 
different from Morton as a man could be. When he wrote 
this book, which was published in London in 1647, he was an 
irascible old Puritan who had suffered much for his faith, and 



lO A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

was still fighting for it, although very near to his threescore 
years and ten. He had been graduated at Cambridge, gone 
into the Church of England, been hounded there for his liberal- 
ism, come to America, and served a pastorate at Agawam (now 
Ipswich), Massachusetts. He had withdrawn on account of ill 
health, but later had served the state so well that he was 
granted six hundred acres as a reward, and had lived on there 
until his return to England at the age of seventy. He believed 
fiercely in the righteousness of the Puritan doctrines and in the 
wickedness of any departure from them ; and his book was a 
valiant protest against any relaxation on the part of the faith- 
ful. It was written with reference to conditions in England, 
but it was composed after fifteen years' residence in America, 
and showed his unrest at conditions in the new country as 
well as in the old. 

The book is a strange compound. In thought it is a piece 
of dyed-in-the-wool old fogyism, but in form and literary style it 
is vigorous, jaunty, and amusing. The full title is " The Simple 
Cobler of Aggawam in America ; willing to help Mend his 
Native Country, lamentably tattered, both in the upper-Leather 
and sole, with all the honest stitches he can take. And as will- 
ing never to be paid for his work by Old English wonted pay. 
It is his Trade to patch all the year long, gratis. Therefore I 
Pray Gentlemen keep your Purses." He feared all innovations, 
but most of all the doctrine that men should enjoy liberty of 
conscience. " Let all the wits under the Heavens lay their heads 
together and find an Assertion worse than this [and] I will Peti- 
tion to be chosen the universal Ideot of the World." '" Since I 
knew what to fear, my timorous heart hath dreaded three things : 
a blazing Star appearing in the Air ; a State Comet, I mean a 
favourite, rising in a kingdom ; a new Opinion spreading in Re- 
ligion." The second section of the book is devoted to fashions 
of dress, an evergreen subject for the satirist. Ward's attitude 
toward woman as an inferior creature was almost as primitive 
as that of the cave man, and apparently he would have liked it 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY II 

better if the "bullymong drossock " had dressed with the sim- 
pHcity of a cave woman. As it was he felt that the lady of 
fashion was '" the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of the 
quarter of a cypher, the epitome of Nothing" ; and he had equal 
contempt for tailors who " spend their lives in making fidle- 
cases for futulous Women's phansies ; which are the very petti- 
toes of Infirmity, the giblets of perquisquilian toyes." The 
remainder of the work is given to a discussion of affairs of 
English state, written with the same aggressive positiveness. 
The most interesting bit of it is the portion which proclaims 
his belief in savage oppression of the Irish, summing up the 
essence of the wrong-headed stupidity which has made the his- 
tory of Ireland so lamentable a story even to the present time. 
What the old gentleman wrote is striking at points, because it 
seems so timely. But Ward was never up to date, in the sense 
of being prophetic. When he said things that apply to the 
twentieth century, they apply either because, like the question 
of extravagance in dress, the topic is a persistent trait in human 
nature or because, like the Irish problem, matters which should 
long ago have been settled have been allowed for centuries 
to confuse and complicate life. Yet Ward wrote with odd and 
striking effectiveness ; and his book is far more than the 
"curiosity" which many critics have agreed to call it, for it 
is one of the best surviving records of the Puritan attempt to 
maintain a strangle hold on human thought. 

The belief in the righteousness of persecuting dissenters was 
the particular ground for attack by a younger and equally vig- 
orous man, Roger Williams (1604- 1683). Williams, before he 
was forty years old, had been thrown out of two church estab- 
lishments — first in Protestant England and then in Puritan 
Massachusetts. He represented what Macaulay termed the very 
" dissidence of dissent." And now, in a long and laborious argu- 
ment lasting from 1644 to 1652, he fought out the issue with 
the Reverend John Cotton. Only by the most generous inter- 
pretation can the lengthening chain of this printed controversy 



12 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

be considered as literature, yet it has the same right to in- 
clusion as the English disquisitions of Wyclif, Jeremy Taylor, 
and John Wesley. An English prisoner in Newgate, assailing 
persecution for cause of conscience, had been answered by John 
Cotton. Then followed Williams's " The Bloody Tenent of 
Persecution for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference 
between Truth and Peace" (1644); Cotton's reply "The Bloody 
Tenent washed and made white in the Blood of the Lamb " 
(1647); and Williams's rejoinder, "The Bloody Tenent yet 
More Bloody : by Mr. Cottons endeavor to wash it white in the 
Blood of the Lambe" (1652). The whole process of argument 
by both the reverend gentlemen was to set their literal English 
minds to work at analyzing and expounding Biblical passages 
which were full of oriental richness of imagery. It was, all 
things considered, rather less reasonable than it would be for 
the chancellors of the British and German empires to base an 
argument about the freedom of the seas upon definite citations 
from the " Rubaiyat " of Omar Khayyam. 

The chief grounds of offense in the sinful unorthodoxy of 
Roger Williams were that he asserted two things which have 
become axioms to-day, and two more which will be admitted by 
every thoughtful and honest person. The first two were that 
religion should not be professed by those who did not believe it 
in their hearts, and that the power of the magistrates extended 
only to the bodies and the property of the subjects and not to 
their religious convictions. The second two were that America 
belonged to the Indians and not to the king of England, and 
that the established church was necessarily corrupt. By this 
last he meant simply that any human organization that is given 
complete authority, and need not fear either competition or 
overthrow by public opinion, is certain to decay from within. 
It was the idea beneath Tennyson's lines 

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 

And God fulfils himself in many ways, 

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 13 

Yet these opinions, preached and practiced by Wilhams, resulted 
in his being expelled from the community. The attempt was 
made to send him back to England, but he managed to get a 
permanent foothold in Rhode Island, where he opposed the 
still more liberal Quakers almost as violently as the churchmen 
of old and new England had opposed him. To his credit be 
it said, however, that he did not invoke the law against them. 
In action as well as in belief he marked the progress of liberal 
thought. 

BOOK LIST 
General References 

Eggleston, Edward. The Transit of Civilization. 

FiSKE, John. Beginnings of New England. Chaps, ii, iii. 

Hart, A. B. American History told by Contemporaries. Vol. I, pp. 

200-272, 313-393- 
Richardson, C. F. American Literature. Chaps, i-iii. 
Tyler, M. C. History of American Literature. Colonial Period. Vol. I, 

chaps, i-ix. 
Wendell, Barrett. A Literary History of America. Bk. I, chaps, i-iv. 

Individual Authors 

Captain John Smith. A True Relation (London, 1608); A Map of 
Virginia, with a Description of the Country (Oxford, 1 61 2); A Descrip- 
tion of New England (London, 161 6). 

Available Editions 

Force. Historical Tracts, Vol. H, Nos. i and 2. 1883. 
Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Ser. j, Vol. VI. 

Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 1-18. ^ 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 1-8, 33-43. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 

PP- 3-17- 
Narratives of Early Virginia. L. G. Tyler, editor. 1907. 
Sailors Narratives. G. P. Winship, editor. 1905. 

William Bradford. History of Plimouth Plantation. First published 
in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Ser. 4. Vol. III. 

Available Editions 

Charles Deane, editor. 1896. 
W. T. Davis, editor. 191 2. 



14 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Collections 
Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 27-44. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 
pp. 93-130. 

Thomas Morton. New English Canaan, or New Canaan. Amsterdam, 
1637. 

Available Editions 

Force. Historical Tracts, Vol. II, No. 5. 1883. C. F. Adams, editor. 
Prince Historical Society Publications. 1888. C. F. Adams, editor.. 

Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 60-72. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 28-30. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 

pp. 147-156- 

Nathaniel Ward. The Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America. 
London, 1647. 

Available Editions 

Force. Historical Tracts, Vol. Ill, No. 8. 1906. 

Ipswich Historical Society of Ipswich, Mass. Publications, 

Biography 

A Memoir of Nathaniel Ward. J. W. Dean. 1868. 

Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 11 2-1 24. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 18-20. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 

pp. 147-156- 

Roger Williams. Works. Edited by members of the Narragansett 
Club, Providence, 1866- 1874. 6 vols. Contains likewise J. Cotton's 
contributions to the controversy with Williams, together with a 
bibUography of Williams's works. 

Available Edition 

Letters from 1632 to 1675. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Ser. 4, Vol. VI. 

Biography and Criticism 

Carpenter, E. J. Roger Williams ; a Study of the Life, etc. Grafton 

History Series. 1909. 
Masson, David. Life of John Milton, Vols. II, IIL 
Straus, Oscar S. Roger WiUiam.?, the Pioneer of Religious Liberty. 

1894- . : ,:. 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 1 5 

Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 94-1 ii. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 32-38. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 

pp. 246-253. 

Literary Treatment of the Period 
Drama 

Barker, J. N. The Indian Princess ; an Operatic Melodrama (1808), 
in Representative Plays by American Dramatists (edited by M. J. 
Moses), Vol. L 1918. 
CusTis, G. W. P. Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia ; a National 
Drama (1830), in Representative American Plays (edited by A. H. 
Quinn). 1917. 
Essays 

Emerson, R. W. Discourse at Concord, 200th Anniversary. Works, 

Vol. XI. 
Lowell, J. R. New England Two Centuries Ago. Works, Vol. II. 
Whittier, J. G. A Chapter of History, in Literary Recreations and 
Miscellanies. 
Fiction 

Austin, Mrs. J. G. Standish of Standish. 
Austin, Mrs. J. G. Betty Alden (sequel). 
Austin, Mrs. J. G. David Alden's Daughter. 
v^' Hav^^thorne, Nathaniel. The Gray Champion and The Maypole 

of Merry Mount, in Twice-Told Tales. 
''' Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Young Goodman Brown, in ^^.tj^^ /ww 

an Old Manse. 
^ Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. 
Johnston, Mary. By Order of the Company. 
Johnston, Mary. The Old Dominion. 
Motley, J. L. Merry Mount. • 

Poetry 

Poems of American History (edited by B. E. Stevenson), pp. 36-56. 
American History by American poets (edited by N. U. Wallington). 
Vol. I, pp. 39-92. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the " New English Canaan," Bk. Ill, with a view to de- 
ciding how far Morton's evident prejudice discredited his account of 
the Puritans ; examine it again for its specifically literary qualities. 

Read from Bradford's " History of Plimouth Plantation " for the 
admirable traits of Puritanism and see, also, if you find grounds for 
any of Morton's strictures. 



l6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Read the Hawthorne selections in the Book List — Literary Treat- 
ment of the Period — and decide how far he may have sympathized 
with the attitude of Morton in the " New English Canaan." 

Read from " The Simple Cobler of Aggawam " for any evidence 
of Nathaniel Ward's residence in America ; decide on the degree to 
which the work is English and the degree to which it is colonial. 

Compare the attitude toward Ireland of Nathaniel Ward in this 
work and of Jonathan Swift in his " Modest Proposal." 

Make comparisons in diction from a corresponding number of 
pages in *' The Simple Cobler " and in Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus." 



CHAPTER II 

THE EARLIEST VERSE 

Although it is generally said of the Puritans that they were 
actually hostile to all the arts, there is abundant proof that they 
had a liking for verse and a widespread inclination to try their 
hands at it. They wrote memorial verses of the most intricate 
and ingenious sorts, sometimes carving them in stone as epi- 
taphs. There is less verse sprinkled through the unregenerate 
Morton's "" Canaan " than there is in the intolerant Ward's 
" Cobler." The old conservative never wrote more wisely than 
in this so-called "song": 

They seldom lose the field, but often win, 

Who end their Warres, before their Warres begin. 

Their Cause is oft the worse, that first begin, 
And they may lose the field, the field that win. 

In Civil Warres 'twixt Subjects and their King, 
There is no conquest got, by conquering. 

Warre ill begun, the onely way to mend, 

Is t' end the Warre before the Warre do end. 

They that will end ill Warres, must have the skill, 
To make an end by Rule, and not by Will. 

In ending Warres 'tween Subjects and their Kings, 
Great things are sav'd by losing little things. 

The first whole volume in English printed in the Western 
Hemisphere (printing of Spanish books in Mexico had long 
preceded) was "The Bay Psalm Book," Cambridge, 1640. This 
represented a conscientious attempt to put into the service of 
worship a literal translation of the Psalms. The worst passages 



1 8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

are all too frequently cited as evidence of the inability of the 
Puritans to compose or appreciate good verse. And this in spite 
of the often-quoted and charmingly written prose comment in 
the editors' preface : 

If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as 
some may desire or expect ; let them consider that God's Altar needs 
not our pollishings : Ex. 2 o. for wee have respected rather a plaine 
translation, then to smooth our verses with the sweetness of any 
paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather than Elegance, 
fidelity rather then poetry, in translating the hebrew words into eng- 
lish language, and David's poetry into english meetre ; that soe wee 
may sing in Sion the Lords songs of prayse according to his owne 
will; untill hee take us from hence and wipe away all our teares, 
& bid us enter into our masters joye to sing etemall Halleluliahs. 

Some historians, moreover, seem to derive satisfaction from 
quoting passages from Michael Wigglesworth's (1631-1705) 
" Day of Doom" as added proof that the Puritans were never 
able to write verse that was beautiful or even graceful. It must 
be admitted that this grave and pretentious piece of work was 
hardly more lovely than the name of the author. Wigglesworth 
was a devoted Puritan who came to America at the age of seven ; 
graduated from Harvard College ; qualified to practice medi- 
cine ; and then became a preacher, serving, with intermissions of 
ill health, as pastor in Maiden, Massachusetts, from 1657 until 
his death in 1705. He was a gentle, kindly minister, unfailing 
in his care for both the bodies and the souls of his parishioners. 

He had the " lurking propensity " for verse- writing which 
was common among the men of his time, but instead of venting 
it merely in the composing of acrostics, anagrams, and epitaphs, 
he dedicated it to the Lord in the writing of a sort of rimed 
sermon on the subject of the Day of Judgment. The full title 
reads, " The Day of Doom or, a Description Of the Great and 
Last Judgment with a short discourse about Eternity. Eccles. 
12. 14. For God shall bring every work into judgment with 
every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." 
It was printed, probably in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1662. 



THE EARLIEST VERSE 19 

The poem is composed of two hundred and twenty-four eight-line 
stanzas. After an invocation and the announcement of the day 
of doom, the dead come from their graves before the throne of 
Christ. There the "sheep" who have been chosen for salva- 
tion are placed on the right, and the wicked "goats" come in 
groups to hear the judge's verdict. These include hypocrites, 
civil, honest men, those who died in youth before they were 
converted, those who were misled by the example of the good, 
those who did not understand the Bible, those who feared mar- 
tyrdom more than hell-torment, those who thought salvation was 
hopeless, and, finally, those who died as babes. All are sternly 
answered from the throne, and all are swept off to a common 
eternal doom except the infants, for whom is reserved " the 
easiest room in hell." 

Two facts should be remembered in criticizing " The Day 
of Doom " as poetry. The first is that Wigglesworth wrote it 
consciously as a teacher and preacher and not as a poet. In his 
introduction he said : 

Reader, I am a fool 

And have adventured 

To play the fool this once for Christ, 

The more his fame to spread. 

If this my foolishness 

Help thee to be more wise, 

I have attained what I seek, 

And what I only prize. 

The second point is that in writing a rimed sermon for 
Christian worshipers he had a model supplied him in the 
popular "Bay Psalm Book," which had appeared some twenty 
years before and which was familiar to all the people who were 
likely to be his readers. The translators of the 121st Psalm 
wrote, for example : 

1 I to the hills lift up mine eyes, 

from whence shall come mine aid 

2 Mine help doth from Jehovah come, 

which heav'n and earth hath made. 



20 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And Wigglesworth took up the strain with 

No heart so bold, but now grows cold, 

and almost dead with fear ; 
No eye so dry but now can cry, 

and pour out many a tear. 

To any modern reader the use of this light-footed meter for 
so grave a subject seems utterly ill-considered, and the whole 
idea of the day of doom as he presented it seems so unnatural 
as to be amusing. But Wigglesworth was trying to write a 
rimed summary of what everybody thought, in a meter with 
which everybody was familiar, and he was unqualifiedly suc- 
cessful. A final verdict on Michael Wigglesworth is often 
superciliously pronounced on the basis of this one poem, or, if 
any further attention is conceded him, the worst of his remain- 
ing output is produced for evidence that he and all Puritan 
preachers were clumsy and prosaic verse-writers. 

Yet in the never-quoted lines immediately following " The 
Day of Doom " — a poem without a title, on the vanity of 
human wishes — Michael Wigglesworth gave proofs of human 
kindliness and of poetic power. In these earnest lines Wiggles- 
worth showed a mastery of fluent verse, a control of poetic 
imagery, and a gentle yearning for the souls' welfare of his 
parishioners which is the utterance of the pastor rather than of 
the theologian. For a moment God ceases to be angry, Christ 
stands pleading without the gate, and the good, pastor utters 
a poem upon the neglected theme " The Kingdom of Heaven 
is within you " : 

Fear your great Maker with a child-like awe, 

Believe his Grace, love and obey his Law. 

This is the total work of man, and this 

Will crown you here with Peace and there with Bliss. 

"The Day of Doom," however, was far more popular than 
the better poetry that Wigglesworth wrote at other times. It 
was the most popular book of the century in America. People 



THE EARLIEST VERSE 21 

memorized its easy, jingling meter just as they might have memo- 
rized ballads or, at a later day. Mother Goose rimes ; and the 
grim description became "the solace," as Lowell says, "of every 
fireside, the flicker of the pine-knots by which it was conned 
perhaps adding a livelier relish to its premonitions of eternal 
combustion." The popularity of "The Day of Doom" shows 
that in the very years when the Royalists were returning to 
power in England the Puritans were greatly in the majority in 
New England. The reaction marked by Morton, Ward, and 
Roger Williams was only beginning. Moreover, if it had been 
the only " poetry " of the period, we should have to admit that 
the Puritans were almost hopelessly unpoetical. 

Anne Bradstreet (i6 12-1672) proves the contrary, and in 
doing so she proves how the love of beauty can manage to 
bloom under the bleakest skies. Her talent was assuredly a 
"flower in a crannied wall." She was born in England in 1612 
and was married at the age of sixteen, as girls often were in those 
days, to a man several years older, Simon Bradstreet. In 1630 
she came to Massachusetts with her husband and her father. 
Both became eminent in the affairs of the colony. In the family 
they were doubtless sober and probably dull. Mrs. Bradstreet 
kept house under pioneer conditions in one place after another, 
and when still less than forty years old had become the mother 
of eight children. Yet somewhere in the rare moments of her 
crowded days — and one can imagine how far apart those 
moments must have been — she put into verse "a compleat 
Discourse and Description of The Four Elements, Constitu- 
tions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year ; Together with an 
exact Epitome of the four Monarchies, viz., the Assyrian, 
Persian, Grecian, Roman " [this means five long poems, and 
not two] ; " also a dialogue between Old England and New 
concerning the late troubles ; with divers other pleasant and 
serious poems." All these she wrote without apparent thought 
of publication, for the purely artistic reason that she enjoyed 
doing so; and in 1650 — halfway between "The Bay Psalm 



22 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Book" and "The Day of Doom" — they were taken over to 
London by a friend, and there put into print as the work of 
" The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America." 

Poetry was more than a diversion for Anne Bradstreet ; it 
must have been a passion. As a girl she had been allowed to 
read in the library of the Puritan Earl of Lincoln, over whose 
estate her father was steward. And here she had fallen under 
the spell of the lesser poets of her age, naturally not the dram- 
atists, whom the Puritans opposed. So, after their fashion, and 
particularly in the fashion of a Frenchman, Du Bartas, whose 
works were popular in an English translation, she wrote her 
quaint ""quarternions," or poems on the four elements, the four 
seasons, the four ages, and the four "humours," and capped 
them all with the four monarchies. These are interesting to 
the modern reader only as examples of how the human mind 
used to work. Chaucer had juggled with the same materials ; 
Ben Jonson had been fascinated with them. It was a literary 
tradition to develop them one by one, to set them in debate 
against each other, and to interweave them into corresponding 
groups : childhood, water, winter, phlegm ; youth, air, spring, 
blood ; manhood, fire, summer, choler ; and old age, earth, 
autumn, melancholy. 

Yet her chief claim on our interest is founded on the 
shorter poems, in which she took least pride. In these she 
showed her real command of word and measure to express 
poetic thought. Her " Contemplations," for example, is as 
poetic in thought as Bryant's " Thanatopsis," or as Lanier's 
" The Marshes of Glynn," to which it stands in suggestive 
contrast (see pp. i6i and 357). The former two are on 
the idea that nature endures but man passes away. This was 
never long absent from the Puritan mind, but when it came 
to the ordinary Puritan it was likely to be cast into homely 
and prosaic verse, as in the epitaph : 

The path of death it must be trod 
By them that wish to walk with God. 



THE EARLIEST VERSE 23 

Anne Bradstreet, taking the same observation, wrote with 
noble dignity : 

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things, 

That draws oblivions curtain over kings, 

Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not, 

Their names without a Record are forgot, 

Their parts, their ports, their pomp 's all laid in th' dust 

Nor wit, nor gold, nor buildings, scape time's rust ; 

But he whose name is grav'd in the white stone ''■ 

Shall last and shine when all of these are gone. 

Yet as a strictly Puritan poetess she did only one part of her 
work. She was even more interesting as an early champion 
of her sex. She did not go so far as to assert equality of the 
sexes ; that was too far in advance of the age for her imagina- 
tion. But she did contend that women should be given credit 
for whatever was worth " small praise." This appears again 
and again in her shorter poems. 

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are 

Men have precedency and still excell, 

It is but vain unjustly to wage warre ; 

Men can do best, and women know it well ; 

Preheminence in all and each is yours ; 

Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours. 

Naturally she was full of pride in the achievements of 
Queen Elizabeth, a pride which she expressed in a fine song 
'" In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess " : 

From all the Kings on earth she won the prize. 
Nor say I more then duly is her due, 
Millions will testifie that this is true. 
•. :'. She. hath wip'd off th' aspersion of her Sex, 
That women wisdom lack to play the Rex : 
Spains Monarch, sayes not so, nor yet his host : 
She taught them better manners, to their cost 
^ Rev. ii, 17. 



24 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The Salique law, in force now had not been, 
If France had ever hop'd for such a Queen. 
But can you Doctors now this point dispute, 
She 's Argument enough to make you mute. 
Since first the sun did run his nere run race, 
And earth had once a year, a new old face. 
Since time was time, and man unmanly man, 
Come shew me such a Phoenix if you can ? 

Then follows a recital of Elizabeth's proudest triumphs, and 
assertions of how far she surpassed Tomris, Dido, Cleopatra, 
Zenobya, and the conclusion : 

Now say, have women worth ? or have they none ? 
Or had they some, but with our Queen is 't gone ? 
Nay Masculines, you have thus taxt us long. 
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong. 
Let such as say our Sex is void of Reason, 
Know tis a Slander now, but once was Treason. 

Anne Bradstreet foreshadowed the "woman's movement" 
of to-day by two full centuries, and thus showed how even the 
daughter of one Puritan governor of Massachusetts and the 
wife of another could be thinking and aspiring far in advance 
of her times. 

BOOK LIST 
General References 

Otis, W. B. American Verse, 1 625-1 807. 1909. (A full and valuable 
bibliography appended.) 

Tucker, S. M. In chap, ix of Cambridge History of American Litera- 
ture, Vol. I, Bk. I. 

Tyler, M. C. A History of American Literature. Colonial Period 
(1 607-1 765), Vol. I, chaps. X, xi. 1878. 

Individual Authors 

The Bay Psalm Book. The Whole Booke of Psalnies Faithfully Trans- 
lated into English Metre, etc. 1640. 
Available Editions 
A Reprint, 1862. 

Facsimile Reprint for the New England Society in the City of New 
York, 1903. 



THE EARLIEST VERSE 25 

Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 73-81. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 16-18. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 

pp. 211-216. 

Michael Wigglesworth. The Day of Doom ; or, a Description of 
the Great and Last Judgment, etc. (1662). Meat out of the Eater: 
or, Meditations concerning the necessity, end and usefulness of 
Afflictions unto God's Children, etc. (1670). God's Controversy with 
New England (1662). Vanity of Vanities (appended to 3d edition of 
The Day of Doom). 

Available Editions 

The Day of Doom, 1867. 

God's Controversy with New England. Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. 
Soc., 1 87 1. 

Biography 

Memoir of Michael Wigglesworth. J. W. Dean. 1871. See also 
M. W.,* earliest poet among Harvard graduates. Proceedings of 
the Mass. Hist. Soc.., 1895. 

Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 18-23, 598-600. 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 163-177. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 57-59. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, 

Vol. II, pp. 3-19. 

Anne Bradstreet. The Tenth Muse lately sprung up in America, or 
Several Poems, compiled with great Variety of Wit and Learning, 
full of DeHght — by a Gentlewoman in those parts. 1650. 

Available Editions 

The Club of Odd Volumes, 1897. 

The Works of Anne Bradstreet, in Prose and Verse. J. H. Ellis, 

editor. 1867. This contains a valuable memoir. 
The Works of Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, together with her prose 

remains, and with an introduction by Charles Eliot Norton. 

Biography and Criticism 

Campbell, Helen. Anne Bradstreet and her Time. 1891. 

Tyler, M. C. American Literature. Colonial Period, Vol. I, chap. x. 

Collections 

Boynton, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 1-8, 594-598. 
Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 146-164. 



26 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

DUYCKINCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 47-52. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. I, 

pp. 311-315. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Confirm the comparison of meters in the " Bay Psalm Book " 
and " The Day of Doom." 

Read the opening and closing passages in " The Day of Doom " 
(Boynton, "American Poetry," pp. 18-21) for the genuinely poetic 
material. Compare with Milton's use of the same material in 
" Paradise Lost," Bk. I. 

Read Anne Bradstreet's verses to Queen Elizabeth, the Prologue 
to the long poems, the rimed epistles to her husband, and the tribu- 
tary poems of Nathaniel Ward and others (Boynton, "American 
Poetry," pp. 1-13 passim) for the difference — even with her liberal- 
ism — between her point of view and that of the modem woman. 

Read " Contemplations " and a passage of equal length from 
" The Faerie Queene " for likenesses and differences in versification. 

Compare the ideas of God and of nature in " Contemplations " (of 
the later seventeenth century), " Thanatopsis" (of the early nineteenth), 
and " The Marshes of Glynn " (of the later nineteenth) and note how 
far they are personal to Anne Bradstreet, Bryant, and Lanier and 
how far they represent the spirit of their respective periods. 



CHAPTER III 

THE TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

As the end of the seventeenth century approached, the 
Puritans were still in an overwhelming majority in New Eng- 
land, but the hold of the churchmen on the government of the 
colonies was, nevertheless, being slowly and reluctantly relaxed. 
Government in America has always, in its broad aspects, reflected 
the will of the people. If legislators and legislation have been 
vicious, it has been because the majority of the people have 
not cared enough about it to see that good men were chosen. 
If stupid and blundering laws have been passed, it has been 
because the people were not wide awake enough to analyze 
them. On the other hand old laws, unadjusted to modern 
conditions, have often become " dead letters " because the 
majority did not wish to have them enforced, even though they 
were on the statute books ; and new and progressive legislation 
has been imposed on reluctant lawmakers by the pressure of 
public opinion. Now the Puritan uprising in England had 
been a democratic movement by a people who wanted to have 
a hand in their own government. It was a religious movement, 
because in England Church and State are one and because the 
oppression in religious matters had been particularly offensive. 
And in England it had been on the whole successful in spite 
of the restoration of kingship in 1660, for from that time on 
the arbitrary power of king and council were steadily and 
increasingly curbed. As a consequence there was a parallel 
movement in the democracy across the sea. American colo- 
nists with a highly developed sense of justice resented a bad 
royal governor like Andros, and were able to force his with- 
drawal ; and they resented unreasonable domination by the 



28 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

clergy, and were independent enough to shake it off. Between 
1690 and 1700 Harvard College became for the first time 
something more than a training school for preachers ; the right 
to vote in Boston was made to depend on moral character and 
property ownership instead of on membership in the church ; 
and in the midst of the Salem witchcraft hysteria judges and 
grand-jurymen caught their balance and refused any longer to 
act as cat's-paws of the clergy. The passage to the eighteenth 
century was therefore a time of transition in common thinking ; 
and the record of the change is clearly discernible in the liter- 
ary writings of the old-line conservatives Cotton and Increase 
Mather, in the Diary of Samuel Sewall, who was able to see the 
light and to change slowly with his generation, and in the Journal 
of Sarah Kemble Knight, who represented the silent unortho- 
doxy of hundreds of other well-behaved and respectable people. 
The Mathers, Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton (1663- 
1728), were the second and third of a succession of four 
members of one family who were so popular and influential 
as to deserve the nickname which is sometimes given them 
of the " Mather Dynasty." These two were both born in 
America, educated in Boston and at Harvard, and made 
church leaders while still young men. In age they were only 
twenty-four years apart, and from 1682 to 1723 they worked 
together to uphold and increase the power of the church in 
New England. Because of their prominence as preachers they 
inherited the " good will " which had belonged to their greatest 
predecessors, and by their own industry, learning, eloquence, 
and general vigor they added to their ecclesiastical fortunes 
like skillful business men. Their congregations were large and 
respectfully attentive ; scores of .their sermons were reprinted 
by request ; on all public occasions and in all public discussions 
they were at the forefront. They were great popular favorites, 
and in the end they suffered the fate of many another popular 
favorite. For the deference which was given to them year after 
year made them vain and domineering ; they talked to^MfiUch 



TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 29 

and too long and too confidently, and they made the mistakes 
of judgment which men who talk all the time are bound to 
make. When Increase Mather lost the presidency of Harvard 
in 1 701 they both acted like spoiled children; their prestige 
was already on the wane, for when the reaction had followed 
the witchcraft delusion, to which they had fanned the flames, 
the caution which they had advised was forgotten, and the 
encouragement which they had given was held up against 
them. To the ends of their lives, in 1723 and 1728, they 
were proudly unrelenting, but their last years were embittered 
by the knowledge that their power was departed from them. 

The bulk of their authorship was prodigious, even though 
most of it was in the form of pamphlets or booklets, for it 
amounted in the case of Increase to about x^ne hundred and 
fifty titles, and in the case of Cotton to nearly four hundred. 
But they are chiefly remembered for three books : '' An Essay 
for the recording of Illustrious Providences," by the elder ; and 
" The Wonders of the Invisible World " and the " Magnalia 
Christi Americana : Or the Ecclesiastical History of New- 
England," by the younger. The first two of these are unin- 
tended explanations to the twentieth-century reader as to how 
a whole community could ever have been swept into the Salem 
witchcraft excesses of 1692, Any educated man who should 
advance the theories .to-day which were soberly expounded by 
these two really learned men would be held up to scorn and 
very possibly be made subject of a sanity investigation. Yet 
two hundred years ago the world was ignorant of the common- 
places of science. Popular superstition therefore ran riot ; and 
the belief that God would interpose in the affairs of daily in- 
dividual life, and that a personal devil was walking up and 
do\yn the earth seeking whom he might devour, added to the 
confusion. Medicine in those days was hardly a science even 
in the broadest sense of the word. Physicians depended for 
honest effects on a few simple herb remedies and on power- 
ful emetics and the letting of blood. The populace believed 



30 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

in curatives which still are resorted to only by children and 
the most ignorant of grown-ups — like anointing implements 
with which they had been injured, in order to heal cuts and 
bruises, or like being touched by the monarch as a remedy 
for scrofula, the " king's evil." Sir Kenelm Digby, a well- 
known subject of Charles 11, reported that he overcame a 
persistent illness by having the fumes of camomile poured into 
his ear. The same sort of speculation prevailed in all the other 
sciences ; and side by side with it superstition flourished. Be- 
tween 1560 and 1600 in the little kingdom of Scotland, which 
had a population no larger than that of Massachusetts to-day, 
there were eight thousand executions for witchcraft, — an aver- 
age of nearly four a week ; and James I, who was Scotland's 
gift to England, was the author of a work on demonology. 

What the New Englanders, and among them the Mathers, 
believed was, therefore, not unusual at the time. In fact the 
Mathers were both somewhat less credulous than their fellows, 
but they only substituted one superstition for another. Their 
way of casting off the old and vulgar beliefs which were pagan 
in origin was to contend that these vain and foolish ideas 
were put into Christian minds by Satan and his emissaries. 
Said Increase Mather in his " Illustrious Providences " : 

Some also have believed that if they should cast Lead into the 
Water, then Saturn would discover to them the thing they inquired 
after. It is not Saturn but Satan that maketh the discovery, when 
anything is in such a way revealed. And of this sort is the foolish 
Sorcery of those Women that put the white of an Egg into a Glass 
of Water, so that they may be able to divine of what Occupation their 
future husbands shall be. It were much better to remain ignorant 
than thus to consult with the Devil. These kind of practices appear 
at first blush to be Diabolical ; so that I shall not multiply Words in 
evincing the evil of them. It is noted that the Children of Israel did 
secretly those things that are not right against the Lord their God 2 King. 
17. 9. I am told there are some who do secretly practice such Abomi- 
nations as these last mentioned, unto whom the Lord in mercy give 
deep and unfeigned Repentance and pardon for their grievous Sin. 



TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 31 

These preachers thus turned superstition into an enemy of 
the true reUgion, as it assuredly is ; but they regarded it not 
as the fruit of ignorance, to be remedied by education and 
intelhgence, but as a device of Satan which could be offset by 
preaching and prayer. The two books are cut from the same 
cloth, so that an indication of the contents of the one just 
mentioned will give an idea of them both. The chapter head- 
ings run as follows : Of Remarkable Sea Deliverances ; Pres- 
ervations ; Lightening ; Philosophical Meditations ; Things 
Preternatural [voices of invisible speakers and doings of mys- 
terious mischief-makers] ; That there are Daemons and Pos- 
sessed Persons [three main arguments : (i) Scripture forbade 
witchcraft, therefore there must be such a thing ; (2) experience 
has made it manifest; (3) convicted maldoers have confessed it] ; 
Apparitions; Conscience; Deaf and Dumb Persons; Tempests; 
Earthquakes ; and Judgments. As a whole the book is a col- 
lection of curious anecdotes taken on almost any hearsay, but 
almost all at second or third hand. They resemble some of the 
most popular of the atrocity stories which have been told during 
every war that history chronicles, but which no investigator has 
been able to run down in any single instance. In point of su- 
perstition the Mathers, to repeat, should be considered in two 
lights : compared with educated men of the twentieth century 
they were almost incredibly primitive in what they were willing 
to believe, but considered with reference to their own generation 
they fought the wiles of the devil as soldiers of the Lord. 

The most ambitious work that either produced was Cotton 
Mather's "Magnalia," a history of the Church in New England. 
This was a bulky two-volume effort, divided into seven parts, 
or books. As a matter of fact it was really a general history 
of the region by a man who regarded the existence of New 
England as identical with the existence of the Church. In this 
basic assumption as well as in many of his details Cotton Mather 
revealed himself as a hopeless conservative of his day — hope- 
less because it was already evident to all but him and his kind 



32 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

that the State was shaking off the control of the Church leaders. 
One can get a fair idea of the bias of the book from the 
opening paragraph : 

It is the Opinion of some, though 't is but an Opinion, and but of 
some Learned Men, That when the Sacred Oracles of Heaven assure 
us, The Things under the Earth are some of those, whose Knees are 
to bow in the Name of Jesus, by those Thi?igs are meant the Inhabitants 
of America, who are Antipodes to those of the other Hemispheres. 
I would not quote any words of Ladantius, though there are some 
to countenance this Interpretation, because of their being so Ungeo- 
graphical : nor would I go to strengthen the Interpretation by reciting 
the Words of the Indians to the first White Invaders of their Terri- 
tories, We hear you are come from under the World, to take our World 
from us. But granting the uncertainty of such an Exposition, I shall 
yet give the Church of God a certain account of these Things, which 
in America have been Believing and Adoring the glorious Name of 
Jesus; and of that Country in America, where those Things have 
been attended with Circumstances most remarkable. 

The " Magnalia " is really an attempt at a general history 
of New England from 1620 to 1698, containing classified 
material on the governors, magistrates, and preachers, a history 
of Harvard, a collection of reports of church transactions, an 
account of the Indian Wars, and "A Faithful Record of many 
Illustrious Wonderful Providences." Yet for historical data it is 
almost as unreliable as the libelous " New English Canaan " 
of Thomas Morton. For Morton was no more eager to turn 
the facts to the discredit of the Puritans than Mather was to 
interpret them to the glory of the Church ; and the consequence 
was that neither could be absolutely trusted. The historians 
have abandoned Mather as a safe authority. His sin has 
found him out, even though he committed it in the name of 
the Lord. 

The man in this period in whom complete faith can be put 
is Samuel Sewall, who did not profess to be an author except 
in an incidental way. He lived from 1652 to 1730 and kept 



TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 33 

a very full diary from 1673 to 1729. This was written with 
no thought of publication, and actually was not printed until a 
hundred and fifty years later, when it was given to the world 
by the Massachusetts Historical Society. In American litera- 
ture Sewall's Diary occupies a place almost exactly parallel to 
that of John Evelyn's in English letters. Their lives and their 
long diaries covered about the same years, and they held cor- 
responding positions in the communities. Both were educated 
men — Sewall was a graduate of Harvard — and both were 
highly respected and trusted. Sewall held a minor position at 
Harvard connected with the library, was prominent in church 
affairs, and was a judge, officiating at the time of the Salem 
witchcraft trials. An informal journal written without prejudice, 
by such a man as he, gives material of the greatest value for 
a picture of the times. It is material of course and not the 
picture itself, for it lacks anything in the way of composition, 
just as do the facts of ordinary daily life in the order of their 
occurrence. But out of it two main threads of interest may be 
unwoven. One is the sober but not unrelieved background of 
the times, itself a composite of various strands. Religion was 
its strongest fiber. Few weeks pass in which there is no record 
of sermon, fast, christening, wedding, funeral, or special cele- 
bration. These were among the chief social happenings of the 
calendar. Funerals as well as more festive occasions were 
accompanied with gifts of gloves and rings ; refreshments 
were ample if not lavish ; and the bill for strong drinks was 
always a heavy item, for it must be remembered that prohibition 
is of recent origin, and that among the Puritans self-control 
made drunkenness as infrequent as drinking was common. 
Against frivolity too they set their minds ; and Sewall's Diary 
gives a protest at " tricks " and dancing and May festivals, 
and even Christmas and Easter, which were triply hated 
because they had their origins in pagan tradition and had 
come to the present through the Church of Rome and the 
Church of England. Yet the objections to these practices and 



34 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

festivals show that they were real disturbances in Sewall's 
Boston, as were the roistering of sailors and other strangers 
in town. 

The other and more important thread is the revelation of 
the inner mind of a flesh-and-blood colonial American. It takes 
patient reading to recreate the real man ; but he is here in these 
pages, with all the inconsistencies that make up life out of story- 
books. He was all in all a fine, devout, broad-gauge man — and 
this is what any biographer would tell of him — with a moderate 
supply of littleness and petty vanity, which the biographer would 
be almost certain to suppress. And he was in himself a record 
of the public opinion of his generation. He wrote two other 
things besides his Dairy. One is a theological treatise which 
was as uninspired as the quoted paragraph from Mather's 
" Magnalia," and on much the same theme. It shows him to 
be an apparently hopeless old fogy. The other is a pamphlet 
called "The Selling of Joseph," which was probably the first 
antislavery utterance printed in America, and implies that 
Samuel Sewall was centuries ahead of the times. There is at 
second glance nothing perplexing in this contradiction. Sewall 
was a normal man who stood between the oldest-fashioned and 
the newest-fashioned thinkers. Sometimes he leaned backward, 
and sometimes forward ; but on the whole he was inclined to 
advance. Of this he gave one famous proof. Five years after 
the Salem trials he had the honesty to admit to himself that 
he had been all wrong in his judgment, and the courage to 
make a public confession of his repentance. He chose one of 
the hardest ways of doing it. Among the " curious punish- 
ments of bygone days," one was the humiliation of disreputable 
persons by forcing them to sit at the foot of the church pulpit 
while the minister read a public reproof. On Fast Day, 1697, 
Samuel Sewall of his own choice posted a bill which could 
be read by any who would, and, giving a copy of it to the 
Reverend Mr. Willard, stood up at the reading before the con- 
gregation. The method of atoning for his mistake proves that 



TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 35 

he was still a devout and faithful Puritan worshiper, but the 
fact that he did so at all shows that he could confess errors, 
even when they had been committed in behalf of the Church. 
The Mathers could neither have seen nor acknowledged such 
mistakes. They were too cocksure of being always right. 
So life passed on, leaving them by the wayside ; and Samuel 
Sewall was with the quiet majority who sadly left them behind. 

A third representative of the attitudes of mind at the chang- 
ing of the centuries was a genial woman, Mrs. Sarah Kemble 
Knight (1666- 1 72 7). She was not in any sense a public figure, 
like the preachers and the judge just mentioned, nor did she 
pursue the habit of writing a continued diary like Sewall's. 
Most emphatically she was not given to the unwholesome 
recording, like many other women in her day, of " itineraries 
of daily religious progress, aggravated by overwork, indigestion, 
and a gospel of gloom." But there was one itinerary which 
she did record for her own satisfaction and which was pub- 
lished more than a century later, in 1825, — her "Journal of 
a Journey from Boston to New York in 1704." At this time 
a vigorous woman of thirty-eight, a wife and a mother, she 
set out alone on the ten-day journey, taking such guides as 
she could engage from one stage to the next. The hardships 
were considerable and the discomforts and inconveniences very 
great ; and the striking fact about them is that she bore up 
under them in a good-humored, matter-of-fact, sort of twentieth- 
century way. An accident was an accident and not a visitation 
fiom on high ; a disagreeable or churlish or even a dishonest 
person was somebody to be put up with and not to be moralized 
on as unscriptural. The worst innkeeper she encountered was 
a man to avoid in the future rather than a man to convert; 
she did not seem shocked by a drunken quarrel late one night, 
but she was annoyed, because she wanted to go to sleep. 

She was at tinges positively frivolous and irreverent in her 
allusions. Crossing a river one day she was very near to 
being tipped over. 



36 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The canoe was very small and shallow, so that when we were in 
[it] seemed ready to take in water, which greatly terrified me, and 
caused me to be very circumspect, sitting with my hands fast on each 
side, my eyes steady, not daring so much as to lodge my tongue a 
hair's breadth more on one side of my mouth than t'other, nor so 
much as to think on Lot's wife ; for a wry thought would have 
overset our wherry. 

Her jests about the name of the innkeeper, Mr. Devil, would 
have landed her in the stocks had she made them publicly 
in Boston. 

The post encouraged me by saying we should be well accommodated 
at Mr. Devil's, a few miles further; but I questioned whether we ought 
to go to the Devil to be helped out of affliction. However, like the 
rest of the deluded souls that post to the infernal den, we made all 
possible speed to this Devil's habitation ; where, alighting in good 
assurance of good accommodations, we were going in. 

The accommodations turned out to be anything but good ; 
and she left her host with a sigh of relief, and the thought "He 
differed only in this from the old fellow in t' other country — 
he let us depart," following the observation with a rimed warn- 
ing for subsequent travelers to avoid this earthly hell. These 
are quoted not because they are admirable or worthy of imita- 
tion but because they give an indication of what was going on 
under one very respectable bonnet when Mrs. Knight was sit- 
ting decorously in her Boston pew. She was a highly respected 
woman in the Puritan community. She was accustomed to its 
ways. There is no word of motherly regret that she was away 
from her little daughter on Christmas Day, for Christmas was 
not a festal day in her calendar. Of the people who were 
coming into manhood and womanhood when Sarah Kemble 
Knight was born, Hawthorne wrote in " The Scarlet Letter " : 
" The generation next to the early immigrants wore the black- 
est shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage 
with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear 
it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety." 



TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 37 

It was men like the author of the " Magnalia " who had 
darkened the national visage, but women here and there, like 
tEe writer of this Journal, who had already returning gleams of 
gayety. Of the three people whom we have taken as types 
of New-England thought at this period. Cotton Mather may 
fairly be regarded as representing the faith of a declining 
theology, Samuel Sewall the hope of a broader and more 
generous civic attitude, and Mrs. Knight as the flicker of 
charity or warm-hearted and genial fellow-feeling which had 
been almost extinguished in the seventeenth century. 

BOOK LIST 
General References 

Chamberlain, N. H. Samuel Sewall and the World he Lived in. 1897. 
Cobb, S. H. Rise of Religious Liberty in America. 1902. 
Dexter, Henry M. The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hun- 
dred Years as Seen in its Literature. With a bibliographical appendix. 

1 880. (An excellent history, and indispensable for its bibliographical 

information.) 
Earle, Alice Morse. Child Life in Colonial Days. 1904. 
Earle, Alice Morse. Curious Punishments of Bygone Days. 1896 

and 1907. 
Earle, Alice Morse. Customs and Fashions in Old New England. 

1893. 
Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life in Colonial Days. 1898. 
Earle, Alice Morse. Stage-Coach and Tavern Days. 1900. 
FiSKE, John. New France and New England, chap. v. 
Masson, David. Life of John Milton. 1 859-1 880. 6 vols. (Valuable 

for the English backgrounds of Puritanism.) 
Richardson, C. F. American Literature, chap. iv. 
Tyler, M. C. A History of American Literature. Colonial Period. 

Vol. I, chaps, xii, xiii, 
V/alker, W. Ten New England Leaders. 1901. 
Wendell, Barrett. Literary History of America, Bk. I, chap. v. 1901. 

Individual Authors 

Increase Mather. An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Provi- 
dences. 1 684. 

Available Edition 

With introductory preface by George Offer. London, 1890. 



38 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 199-216. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, p. 59. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. A Library of American Literature, 

Vol. II, pp. 75-106. 

Cotton Mather. The W^onders of the Invisible World. 1693. Mag- 
nalia Christi Americana: or, The Ecclesiastical History of New 
England, 1 620-1 698. 1702. 
Available Editions 

Magnalia. With notes, translations, and life. 1853. 

The Wonders, etc. Reprints, Cambridge, 1861, 1862. 
Biography and Criticism 

Marvin, Rev. A. P. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. 1892. 

Parrington, V. L. Cambridge History of American Literature. 
Vol. I, Bk. I, in chap iii. 

Sprague, W. B. Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol. I, pp. 189-195. 

1857- 
Tyler, M. C. History of American Literature. Colonial Period. 

Vol. I, chaps, xii, xiii. 
Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 217-237. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 59-66. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Libraryof American Literature, Vol. II, 

pp. II 4-1 66. 

Samuel Sewall. Diary from 1673 to 1729. The only edition is Mass. 
Hist. Soc. Coll., Ser.s, Vols. VI-VIII. 
Collections 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 238-251. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. II, 
pp. 188-200. 
History and Criticism 

Chamberlain, N. H. (See General References.) 
Tyler, M. C. (See General References.) 

Sarah Kemble Knight. Journals of Madame Knight. From the 
original manuscripts written in 1704. T. Dwight, editor. 1825. 
Available Editions 

A Reprint, Albany, 1865. 
A Reprint, Norwich, Conn., 1901. 
Collection 

Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. II, 
pp. 248-264. 



TRANSITION TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 39 

History and Criticism 

Tyler, M. C. (See General References.) 

Literary Treatment of the Period 
Drama 

Barker, J. N. Superstition, a Tragedy (1824), in Representative 

American Plays (edited by A. H. Quinn). 1917. 
Longfellow, H. W. The New England Tragedies. 
WiLKiNS, Mary E. Giles Corey, Yeoman. 



rs 

Lowell, J. R. Witchcraft. "Works, Vol. V. 

Whittier, J. G. Charms and Fairy Faith, and Magicians and Witch 
Folk in Literary Recreations and Miscellanies. 
Fiction 

Austin, Mrs. J. G. A Nameless Nobleman. 

Austin, Mrs. J. G. Dr. Le Baron and his Daughter (sequel). 

Cooper, J. F. The Wept of Wish-ton- Wish. 

SIMMS, W. Gilmore. The Yemassee. 

WiLKiNS, Mary E. The Heart's Highway. 

Poetry 

Poems of American History (edited by B. E. Stevenson), pp. 71-97. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the introduction to the " Magnalia " or a chapter from 
" Illustrious Providences," or "The Wonders of the Invisible World," 
for evidence of superstition based on Scriptural authority and of 
vulgar, or folk, superstition. 

In the Nation of August 17, 1918, pp. 173-175, there is an 
article in review of five new books under the title " Spirit Communi- 
cation." Establish the differences and the likenesses between the 
modem attitude and the attitude of the seventeenth century toward 
" the invisible world." 

Read Fitz-Greene Halleck's " Connecticut," stanzas xiii-xxvi, and 
Whittier's "The Double-Headed Snake of Newbury," 11. 71-85, as 
well as Irving's " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " (see p. 129 in this 
volume), for typical literary expressions of aversion to Cotton Mather. 

The best method of approaching Samuel Sewall's Diary is to read 
some fifty pages — preferably between 1680 and 17 10 — -for the 
references to a definite topic. This may best be selected from prom- 
ising suggestions in the first few pages of reading. If none appears, 



40 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

look for any of the following or others like them: Sunday observ- 
ance ; funerals, weddings, and christenings ; the pastor and his 
people ; holidays ; parents and children ; self -analysis ; . religious dis- 
cipline; law and order. Comparisons on a given topic with the 
entries, for the same period in Evelyn or for an equal number of 
pages in Pepys are fruitful. 

A similar approach may .be made to Mrs. Knight's cornpact and 
consecutive Journal. Her humor, irreverence, tolerance, independ- 
ence, timidity, or her use of exaggeration, mock-heroics, Scriptural 
allusion, personal, description, social analysis, are rich in their 
possibilities. 

Read in Andrew Macphail's " Essays in Puritanism " the essay 
on John Winthrop, and then the exchange of opinions between 
Messrs. White and Hackett in the New Republic, May 17, 19 19. 
Do either or both throw light on the chief characters discussed 
in this chapter? 



CHAPTER IV 

JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

The danger in drawing conclusions about a whole century, 
as we have been doing, is that the facts may be forced to seem 
far simpler than they were. It should be kept in mind that 
these are only certain broad currents of thought, tendencies 
which were obscured by all sorts of cross waves and chop seas. 
And it should be mentioned that the Puritan with the greatest 
mind of them all, Jonathan Edwards, was only a year old when 
Mrs. Knight made her journey to New York, and that to the 
end of his life, in 1758, he struggled in vain to keep alive 
the logic of the old religious doctrines. 

He was born in 1703 with a rich heritage from the learned 
aristocracy. As a youth he showed extraordinary precocity, 
which appeared in his early excursions into philosophy and 
natural science and developed further in the unfulfilled promise 
of religious radicalism. 

From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections against 
the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to 
eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally 
to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear 
like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, 
when I seemed to be convinced, and fully satisfied, as to this sover- 
eignty of God. ... I have often, since that first conviction, had quite 
another kind of sense of God's sovereignty than I had then. I have 
often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The 
doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright, and 
sweet Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But 
my first conviction was not so. 

The first instance that I remember of that sort of inward, sweet de- 
light in God and divine things that I have lived much in since, was on 
41 




POINTS OF LITERARY INTEREST IN NEW ENGLAND 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 43 

reading those words, i Tim. i. 1 7, Now unto the King eternal, immortal, 
invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen. 
As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were 
diffused through it, a sense of the gloiy of the Divine Being. . . . 

Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an 
account to my father of some things that had passed in my mind. I 
was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together ; and when 
the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in 
my father's pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, 
and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so 
sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know 
not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunc- 
tion ; majesty and meekness joined together ; it was a sweet and 
gentle, and holy majesty ; and also a majestic meekness ; an awful 
sweetness ; a high, and great, and holy gentleness. 

The striking fact about Edwards's later development, hovi^ever, 
is that he passed entirely from poetic mysticism to a champion- 
ship of the theology of Calvin. His great period of influence 
was during his pastorate in Northampton, Massachusetts, from 
1727 to 1750, and during his following six years at Stockbridge, 
Massachusetts. He was a preacher of extraordinary power — the 
more extraordinary because his command of audiences was ob- 
tained by the sheer quality of his discourse and not, as in the case 
of John Cotton and the Mathers, by pulpit presence or flights of 
eloquence. His sermons were at once irresistible in their logic 
(provided his auditors were willing to start with his assumptions) 
and, at the same time, irresistibly cogent in their simple, concrete 
methods of illustration. His most famous discourse, " Sinners 
in the Hands of an Angry God," is a complete illustration of 
his method. Notwithstanding his sincerity and his talents as 
a preacher his ministerial experience was ended with a tragic 
downfall. His parishioners could not endure the rigor of his 
teachings, agreeing perversely with Dr. Johnson's later dictum 
on his " Freedom of the Will " — that all theory might be for 
it but all experience was against it. During his residence in 
Stockbridge he continued with the writing of discourses which 



44 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

philosophers have agreed at once to applaud and reject. He 
died in 1758 shortly after his inauguration as president of the 
College of New Jersey. 

His failure lay in the fact that his religion was a religion of 
logic rather than of faith. It was based on what learned men 
had theorized out from the Bible, and in a great many cases 
from the least important passages of the Bible, and it sternly 
rejected what many other equally learned men had found in the 
same book. Moreover, it was concerned with life on earth 
chiefly as a prelude to a future life of reward or punishment. 
In all the tide of human event which was making the eighteenth 
century each year more interesting as a matter of present livings 
men could not go on indefinitely looking everywhere but at life 
itself. Oliver Wendell Holmes summed up the situation in his 
"Wonderful ' One-Hoss Shay' " (see p. 305). This is a pleasant 
story for children, but a comment on life for grown-ups ; and 
to the grown-ups Holmes addressed his concluding couplet: 

End of the wonderful one-hoss shay : 
Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 

Benjamin Franklin (1706- 1790) is the man who reflected 
better and earlier than other Americans the complete change 
from the Puritan point of view — reflecting it so unqualifiedly 
that he must be understood as an extreme case and not a typ- 
ical one. In education and character he offered a succession of 
contrasts to the leaders of seventeenth-century New England, 
He did not come of a cultured family ; he was not a college 
man ; he did not enter any of the learned professions — ministry, 
law, or teaching ; he was not an active supporter of the church ; 
he did not live in the New England where he was born. In 
fact he was one of the first to act on the much-quoted principle, 
" Boston is a very good place — to come from." 

Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the youngest son of a 
tallow-chandler and the fifteenth of seventeen children. He was 
industrious and bookish as a boy, and before he was seventeen 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 45^ 

years old he had trained himself to write in the fashion of the 
English essayist Joseph Addison, had been apprenticed in his 
brother's printing shop, and had written many articles pub- 
lished in his brother's paper, The New England Courant. In 
1723, as the result of troubles with his brother, he ran away to 
Philadelphia. From there he went to London for two years, 
on the promise of the irresponsible Governor Keith to set him 
up in the printing business on his return. The failure of the 
governor to keep his word did him no harm in the end, for he 
established his own printing house in 1728, and in 1748, at 
the age of forty-two, he was able to retire with a moderate 
fortune. During this time he had not only succeeded in 
Philadelphia but had combined with partners in New York, 
Newport, Lancaster (Pennsylvania), Charleston (South Carolina), 
Kingston, Jamaica, and Antigua. 

The activities of his life were so crowded and interwoven 
that they may best be summarized under a few simple heads. 
As a public-spirited citizen of Philadelphia he organized a de- 
bating society, the Junto, in 1727 ; published The Pennsylvania 
Gazette in 1729 ; founded the first circulating library in America 
in 1731 ; conducted Poor Richard's Almanac from 1732 to 
1 748 ; organized the American Philosophical Society in 1 744 ; 
and in 1749 founded the academy which developed into the 
University of Pennsylvania. As an inventor he perfected the 
Franklin stove in 1742 and contrived methods of street paving 
and lighting which were widely adopted. As a scientist he 
proved the identity of lightning and electricity in 1752, and 
went on from that to further investigations which sooner or 
later brought him election to the Royal Academy of London 
and their Copley gold medal, an appointment as one of the 
eight foreign associates of the French Academy of Sciences;, 
and medals and diplomas from other societies in St. Petersburg, 
Madrid, Edinburg-h, Padua, and Turin. As a holder of public- 
trusts and offices he became clerk of the Assembly of Penn- 
sylvania in 1736; postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737; deputy 



46 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

postmaster-general of the colonies in 1753 ; commissioner from 
Pennsylvania to the Albany Congress in 1754 ; colonial agent 
to London from Pennsylvania in 1757 and 1764 and for 
Massachusetts in 1770 ; one of the framers of the Declaration 
of Independence ; minister to the French court from the United 
States in 1778; a signer of the Peace Articles in 1783; presi- 
dent of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1785-1787; and 
a framer of the Constitution of the United States. Such a cata- 
logue is not a thing to be exactly memorized. Its value is like 
that of an entry in " Who's Who in America " — it should be 
referred to when needed. Yet it is worth reading and rereading 
as an evidence of the almost unparalleled variety and usefulness 
of occupations which filled this man's life. 

Usefulness is, without question, the idea which Franklin most 
emphasized in his writings and exemplified in his conduct. In 
comparison with the Puritan fathers he was more interested in 
the eighteenth century than in eternity, more actively concerned 
with Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and the United States of 
America than with the mansions prepared above. This atti- 
tude of mind was not a freakish or accidental one ; it can be 
accounted for in the influences which affected him when he 
was a boy and in the kind of English and American thinking 
which characterized his whole century. 

He came of what he himself called an " obscure family," his 
ancestors in the near generations having been hard-working, in- 
telligent English clerks and artisans. They were nonconformists, 
and independent enough to take their chances in the new world 
for the sake of liberty of conscience. But the lesson that he 
learned from his parents was rather more practical than theo- 
logical and was, perhaps unconsciously, attested to in the epi- 
taph which he wrote for them. At two points in it he recorded 
his belief that God helps them who help themselves, laying 
special stress on the degree to which they help themselves ; 

By constant labor and industry, 
With God's blessing, 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 47 
he says, and again : 

Be encouraged to diligence in thy calling 
And distrust not Providence. 

Cotton Mather, whom Frankhn quoted with respect, would 
have reversed the ideas in order and importance ; but it was 
Cotton Mather's " Essays to Do Good " that Franklin quoted, 
and his ability to draw a practical inference from some slight 
event (" Be not too proud," he said, when he bumped his head 
against a beam), and not any of his sermons. Franklin's early 
reading was almost wholly in the field of what might be called 
common-sense literature — discussions of different aspects of 
daily life and how to get on in it. He read " Pilgrim's Progress," 
which of all religious books is one of the most definite on 
questions of earthly conduct. He read a great deal of history 
and biography : Defoe '" Upon Projects," Locke " Concerning 
Human Understanding " and '" The Art of Thinking," and 
Addison on all the common-sense subjects that make up the 
contents of the Spectator. He read the rimed " Essays " of 
Alexander Pope, too, using a quotation from one of them to 
confirm his belief in a system of arguing by means of asking 
questions, which is known as the " Socratic method." 

In a word, he filled his boyish mind with the special kind 
of writing which belonged to the first half of the eighteenth 
century in England, and this was exactly the kind to be valua- 
ble to a youth who was destined to work his way unaided to 
prosperity. For this period was a particularly prosaic and 
practical one. In the two generations just gone England 
had passed through the Puritan uprising against Charles I, the 
return of the Stuarts to the throne, and the further rebellion 
against James II. Religious enthusiasm had risen to its height 
in the middle of the century, but had already waned by the 
years when John Milton received only ten pounds for the manu- 
script of " Paradise Lost." By the end of the century poli- 
tics had definitely overthrown religion as a subject of popular 



48 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

discussion. Little newspapers had sprung up in surprising num- 
bers, the coffeehouses had provided centers for conversation, 
and a common-sense age was setthng down to a rather sordid 
and common-sense existence. Sometimes under the impulse 
of a world movement a few leaders of thought have a great 
deal to do with actually molding the character of the period in 
which they live, but in less inspiring times the popular writers 
produce just about "what the public wants." The period of 
Franklin's youth was one of the latter kind, and Addison, Pope, 
and their followers were writing for a public who wanted to 
keep on the surface of life. It was as if the people had said : 
" All this religious zeal of the last century only made England 
uncomfortable. Just see what confusion it threw us into ! Now 
we are back about where we were when the trouble started. 
Let 's be sensible and stick to facts, and stop quarreling with 
each other." So the populace, who began reading in greater 
numbers than ever before, read the little newspapers ; and the 
various groups of congenial people talked things over in the 
coffeehouses ; and Addison made it his ambition to bring 
"philosophy" (by which he meant a simple theory of everyday 
living) down from the clouds and into the field of ordinary 
thinking. The plays of Shakespeare would have helped Frank- 
lin very little in the early stages of the printing business ; so 
would the poems of Milton ; but the essays of Addison, Pope, 
and Defoe made for him what would be called to-day " excel- 
lent vocational reading." And he profited by it to the limit. 

Moreover, if literature helped to make him a good printer, 
printing was no less helpful toward making him a good writer. 
There are few trades or crafts which demand so high a degree 
of accuracy, A boy or girl who achieves a grade of 95 per cent 
in any study, even in mathematics, is well above the average ; 
but a typesetter or proofreader who avoids error in only nine- 
teen out of every twenty operations will have a short career in 
any printing house. Most people do not know of the extreme 
care which is given to assure correctness in the simplest 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 49 

product which is put into type. A textbook, for example, after 
being written, revised, recopied, and revised is criticized by 
a special expert and once more revised before the publisher's 
editor goes over it word by word. Then when it goes to the 
printer it is set up in long strips, or galleys, from these into 
pages (still in type), and from these is cast into plates, and 
after each of these three operations is read over with micro- 
scopic care by both an editorial proofreader and the author. 
During the printing experience a liberal allowance is made to 
the author for actual changes from his original copy, but the 
printer is held responsible for any slightest departure from 
the manuscript that is supplied him. The boy who, like 
Franklin, has spent some years in the printing room and the 
editorial office has received a discipline which is miles beyond 
that which can ever be given in any school or college 
composition course .^ 

To this important training Franklin added a conscious 
attempt to develop his own powers. Printing and the love 
of books led the horse' to water, but his desire for self- 
expression made him drink. Of this he tells in an early pas- 
sage of the " Autobiography." His daily work had taught him 
to spell and puncture correctly, but he was faulty in choice 
of words and in "perspicuity," or clearness of construction. 
So he took Addison's Spectator as his model, put paragraphs 
into his own words, then tried to set them back into the 
original form, compared the two products, and made up his 
mind wherein Addison's versions were better than his and 
wherein, as he sometimes thought, his were better than his 
teacher's. He also followed up the art of discussion both in 
speech and in writing, making it always a point to convince 
his opponents without antagonizing them. These things he 
did, not in order to become a professional writer but solely 

1 This same discipline was enjoyed — among later American authors — by 
Mark Twain, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells, and Walt Whitman, all of 
whom were scrupulously careful writers. 



50 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

in order to utter or write his ideas to the best effect. " It has 
ever since," he says, " been a pleasure to me to see good 
workmen handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, 
having learned so much by it as to be able to do little jobs 
myself," Prose writing was simply a tool for him — the most 
useful one that he ever mastered and, as he says elsewhere, 
the principal means of his advancement. 

As long as he was a printer (until he was forty-two years 
old) he employed his prose composition in writing copy which 
was clear and interesting and therefore salable — chiefly in 
the Pennsylvania Gazette and in Poor Richard's Almanac ; 
but during and after that time he put his powers to even 
greater use as a speaker and as a writer of articles and 
pamphlets on affairs of public interest. He was almost always 
simple, definite, and practical, for he wrote to the mass of 
people with little education. He realized that if he was to 
bring his points home to them he must not write " over their 
heads," and that he must appeal to their common sense and 
their self-interest ; and he was invariably good-humored, for 
he knew that good humor makes more friends than enemies. 

Out of the great mass of Franklin's published writings — 
and they run to a dozen large volumes —*- two deserve special 
attention as pieces of American literature : Poor Richard's 
Almanac and the "Autobiography." The former of these 
was a commercial undertaking ; it was written to sell. The 
almanac, an annual publication of which the calendar was a very 
small part, had been popular in England and America for many 
generations before Franklin started his own. It preceded the 
newspaper and until 1 800, or even later, reached a wider public. 
The second piece of printing in this country was Pierce s 
Almanack, printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1639. 
Others followed: in Boston, 1676; in Philadelphia, 1676; in 
New York, 1697 ; in Rhode Island, 1728 ; and in Virginia, 
1 73 1. There had been, however, only one great almanac editor 
to precede Franklin in America — Nathaniel Ames, who began 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 51 

publishing his series in Dedham, Massachusetts, in. 1726. 
Besides the calendar, the astronomical data for the year, and 
the half-jocular weather predictions, the chief feature of Ames's 
was the poetry, very considerable in bulk, and the " interlined 
wit and humor," which was brief and usually rather pointless. 
Franklin, realizing the fondness of his generation for the wise 
sayings of which Alexander Pope was then the master-hand 
in the English-speaking world, dropped the poetry and studied 
to expand the interlined material of Ames into the chief con- 
tribution of his " Richard Saunders." " I endeavored to make 
it both entertaining and useful," he said in the " Autobiog- 
raphy," " and it accordingly came to be in such demand, that 
I reaped considerable profit from it ; vending annually near 
ten thousand. And observing that it was generally read, 
scarce any neighborhood in the province being without it, 
I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction 
among the common people, who bought scarcely any other 
books. I therefore filled all the little spaces, that occurred 
between the remarkable days in the Calendar with proverbial 
sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as 
the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue ; it 
being more difficult for a man in want, to act always honestly, 
as, to use here one of those proverbs, it is hard for an empty 
sack to stand uprighty 

In the Almanac of 1757 he collected the sayings of the last 
twenty-five years into a timely essay on " The Way to Wealth," 
making an old man deliver a speech filled with quotations from 
" Poor Richard." This contained not only sound practical advice 
for any time but was also pertinent to a political issue of the 
moment, and so applied to the state as well as to all the people 
in it. It was reprinted by itself and had an immense circula- 
tion in America and abroad, in the original and in several 
translations. Very likely since "The Day of Doom," in 1662, 
nothing had been so influential in the colonies as " The Way 
to Wealth," in 1757; and no contrast could better indicate 



52 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the change that had taken place between those two dates. 
Said Father Abraham, the old speaker: 

It would be thought a hard Government that should tax its People 
one-tenth Part of their Time, to be employed in its Service. But Idle- 
ness taxes many of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in 
absolute Sloth, ox doing of nothing, with that which is spent in idle 
Employments or Amusements, that amount to nothing. Sloth, by 
bringing on Diseases, absolutely shortens Life. Sloth, like rust, con- 
sumes/aster than Labour wears; while the used Key, is always bright, 
as Poor Richard says. But dost thou love life, then do not squander 
Time, for that V the stuff Life is made of, as Poor Richard says. How 
much more than is necessary do we spend in sleep, forgetting that 
The sleeping Fox catches no Poultry, and that There will be sleeping 
enough in the Grave, as Poor Richard says. 

This was the sort of workaday advice that was shouldering 
the old-time theology into modest Sabbath-day retirement. 

Franklin's "Autobiography" is the greatest of his writings if 
not the greatest of all his achievements. " Poor Richard " and 
"The Way to Wealth" are full of good common sense, but they 
belong only to the " efficiency " school of ideas and morality ; 
they are neither distinguished in form nor inspiring in content, 
and they are chiefly interesting because they so well mirror what 
was in the eighteenth-century mind. The "Autobiography" 
has a larger claim to attention than these, for by general consent 
it has come to be regarded as one of the great classics of litera- 
ture. Several features have combined to make it- deserve this 
high place. Simply stated they are all nothing more than ways 
of explaining that this book is the simple, definite, honest life- 
story of an eminent man, as he recalled it in his old age. 

In the first place, it is simple and uncalculated. It was not 
composed, like " Poor Richard," to sell, nor, like many of 
Franklin's speeches and pamphlets, to convince by skillful argu- 
ment. As a matter of fact, Franklin did not want to write it 
at all, and consented only when the insistence of his friends 
and relatives made it easier to do it than to leave it undone. 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 53 

Moreover, he dropped it for the thirteen years from 1771 to 
1784, took it up again when wearied, old, and ill, and left it at 
his death hardly more than well started, with all the most cele- 
brated part of his life still to be recounted. It is simple there- 
fore because it was done with no desire to create an impression 
or to be '" literary," and is the unadorned narrative of an old 
man familiarly told to those who knew him best. 

For the same reason it is definite and homely in what he 
chose to record. It is the "little, nameless, unremembered " 
episodes not set down in more pretentious histories for which 
the "Autobiography" is itself best remembered. Some of the 
details make real the conditions of living in those simple times 
— the invention of the stove named after him, the improvements 
in street lighting and paving, the organization of a fire company. 
Others are typical of human nature in any age, as his portrait 
of the croaker, Samuel Mickle, who sadly predicted Franklin's 
failure as a printer, or as his jocular account of the entrance 
of luxury into his own household. 

We have an English proverb that says, He that would thrive, must 
ask his wife. It was lucky for me that I had one as much disposed 
to industry and frugality as myself. She assisted me cheerfully in my 
business, folding and stitching pamphlets, tending shop, purchasing 
old linen rags for the paper-makers, etc., etc. We kept no idle servants, 
our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For 
instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and 
I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer, with a pewter spoon. 
But mark how luxury will enter families, and make a progress, in spite 
of principle: being called one morning to breakfast, I found it in a 
China bowl, with a spoon of silver ! They had been bought for me 
without my knowledge by my wife, and had cost her the enormous 
sum of three and twenty shillings, for which she had no other excuse 
or apology to make, but that she thought her husband deserved a silver 
spoon and China bowl as well as any of his neighbors. This was the 
first appearance of plate and China in our house, which afterward in 
a course of years, as our wealth increased, augmented gradually to 
several hundred pounds in value. 



54 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Many and many of the simplest episodes reveal how shrewd, 
penetrating, and, above all, how clear headed he invariably was. 
Such, for example, was the hour when he was listening to the 
great evangelist, Whitefield, and while all his other auditors 
were being thrilled by the speaker's eloquence, Franklin was 
backing away from him step by step, in order to estimate how 
far his voice would carry, and thus to verify the newspaper 
accounts of his having preached to twenty-five thousand people 
in the fields. Franklin went away full of admiration for the 
preacher's voice, but with no word of comment on his sermon. 
He went often to hear Whitefield, but always as a very human 
public speaker and never as a "divine." A biographer, even 
one of his associates, could not have known many of the inti- 
mate facts that Franklin included, and he would almost surely 
have left out other details as irrelevant or impertinent. Franklin 
himself, in contrast, wrote the things which still clung in his 
old man's memory and which must have been important in 
his development, or he would have forgotten them. 

Another striking feature of the " Autobiography " is its 
honesty, for he did not hesitate to record happenings which 
revealed defects in his character — defects which nine out of ten 
admiring biographers would have been inclined to omit or even 
actually to cover up. Franklin knew that his life had not been 
all admirable, that many times it had not been above reproach ; 
but, all things considered, he was willing to let it stand for 
what it was. In consequence, if one reads his story as honestly 
as Franklin wrote it, — and few people do, — it will appear that 
not only was he disorderly and unmethodical but that he was 
not always truthful, that he was sometimes unscrupulous in busi- 
ness, and that he was at times self-indulgent and immoral. 
In fact too often the editing of Franklin's life-story seems 
to have been done on the principle laid down by Dr. Samuel 
Johnson about Chesterfield's " Letters to his Son" — that they 
should be put into the hands of every young man after the 
immorality had been taken out of them. This is not honest 
teaching and does not lead to honest habits of study. 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 55 

The truth is that Franklin was like other people in being 
a combination of virtues and defects. He was unlike other 
people in having extraordinary talents and virtues and in 
owning up to his defects. For the two great " errata " of his 
life — the use of money intrusted to him for Mr. Vernon 
and his unfaithfulness while in London to Miss Read, his 
betrothed — he afterward made the fullest possible atonement. 
In his glorification of usefulness at every turn he was at 
once the greatest expounder and the greatest example of his 
century. He made a religion of usefulness, putting it into 
a siniple creed which gives less heed to the spirit of worship 
than many of us need, but far more to the spirit of service 
than most of us follow : 

It is expressed in these words, viz. : 

That there is one God, who made all things. 

That he governs the world by his providence. 

That he ought to be worshipped by adoration, prayer and thanks- 
giving. 

But that the most acceptable service of God is doing good to man. 

That the soul is immortal. 

And that God will certainly reward virtue and punish vice, either 
here or hereafter. 

In the third of these articles Franklin recommended a wor- 
ship which he did not practice, but in the fourth he presented 
a doctrine of service of which his life was a remarkable fulfill- 
ment. In his theory of life Franklin seemed to make no claims 
for the finer emotions, but in his actual citizenship in all its public 
aspects he was so far above the average man as to serve as a 
pretty safe " working model " for this and coming generations. 

If he had not written this uncompleted life-story we should 
not know the man as intimately as we do, for to read the 
"Autobiography" is to read Franklin himself. 

Since the "Autobiography" brings the story of Franklin 
only up to 1757, it gives no hint of the Revolutionary struggle 
in which as negotiator and diplomat he was hardly less im- 
portant than was Washington as military leader. The America 



56 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

presented in these pages is loyal and contented. The rising 
voices of discomfort from 1765 to 1775, of doubt during the 
next year, and of decision for revolt in. 17 76 were all echoed 
and often led by Franklin in his political writings. Moreover, 
it is of especial significance in these days to recall another fact 
unrecorded in his own story — that he was the first American 
to represent his nation among other nations, and that in his 
feeling for America as a member of the great world-family he 
was a hundred years and more ahead of his countrymen. The 
new marshaling of forces in 19 17 which brought about the 
celebration of the Fourth of July in London and the arrival 
of allied American troops in Paris recalled from hour to hour 
the name of Franklin as our first great international figure. 

BOOK LIST 
General References 

Brooks, Van Wyck. America's Coming of Age, chap. i. 191 5. 
Dunning, A. E. Congregationalists in America. 1894. 
FiSKE, John. New France and New England, chap. vi. 1902. 
Walker, W. History of the Congregational Churches in the United 
States. 1 894. 

Individual Authors 

Jonathan Edwards. There have been at least twenty-two editions 
and printings of Edwards's collected work. The most accessible is 
that in four volumes which appeared originally in 1843 and has 
been reprinted nine times, the last in 18S1. In these volumes the 
most important pages are in Vol. I, pp. 1-27 (biographical), and in 
Vol. IV (sermons). 
Biography and Criticism 

DwiGHT, Timothy. Travels in New England and New York (1822), 

Vol. IV, pp. 323 ff. 
Holmes, O. W. Pages from an Old Volume of Life. 1891. 
..'.' James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. 1902.. 

.-.. . . Macphail, Andrew. Essays in -Puritanism. 1905. . 

Sanborn, F. B. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. XVII, No. 4. 

October, 1883. ■ ... 

Stephen, Leslie. LittelPs Living Agi, yo\. V {ser. [$), No. 1546. 
Jan. .24, 1874. , . 

■ ■ ■ Walker, Williston. Ten New England Leaders. 1901. 

'■•Ward, W. H. TheIndependent,No\.lN,'iiio.2Z6l. Oct. i, 1903. 



JONATHAN EDWARDS AND BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 57 

WooDBRiDGE, F. J. E. Philosoph. Rev., Vol. XIII, No. 4. July, 1904. 
The Congregationalist and Christian World, Edwards number, Vol. 
LXXXVIII, No. 40. Oct. 3, 1903. 

Benjamin Franklin. There are eleven editions of Franklin's collected 
works in English, French, and German, dating from 1773 to 1905. 
The best of these is the one compiled and edited by John Bigelow. 
1889. 10 vols. Poor Richard Improved, 1757. This was later 
issued as Father Abraham's Speech, over 150 editions and reprints 
of which are recorded. Autobiography. First issued in Paris, 1791. 
Best recent editions: John Bigelow, editor, 1874; H. E. Scudder, 
editor. Riverside Literature Series, 1886; William MacDonald, 
editor, Te7nple Autobiography Series, 1905; William MacDonald, 
editor, Everyman'' s Library, 1908. 
History and Biography 

Bruce, W. C. Benjamin Franklin Self-Revealed : A Biographical and 

Critical Study based mainly on his own Writings. 1918. 2 vols. 
Ford, P. L. The Many- Sided Franklin. 1899. 

Hale, E. E. and E. E., Jr. Franklin in France ; from original docu- 
ments most of which are now published for the first time. 1887- 
1888. 2 vols. 
McMaster, J. B. Benjamin Franklin (A.M.L. Series). 1887. 
McMaster, J. B. Franklin in France. Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LX. 

September, 1887. 
Sherman, Stuart P. Cambridge History of American Literature, 

Vol. I, chap. vi. 
Swift, Lindsay. Catalogue of works relating to Benjamin Franklin 
in the Boston Public Library. 1883. 

Colonial Almanacs 

KiTTREDGE, G. L. The Old Farmer and his Almanack. 1904. 

Colonial Journalism 

Cook, E. C. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, 

chap. vii. 
Hudson, F. JournaUsm in the United States, 1 690-1 872. 1873. 
Thomas, I. History of Printing in America. 1871. 

Literary Treatment of the Period 
Fiction 

Cooper, J. F. Satanstoe. 
Cooper, J. F. The Chainbearer. 
Cooper, J. F. The Deerslayer. 
Cooper, J. F. The Redskins. 
Thackeray, W. M. The Virginians. 
Poetry 

Poems of American History (edited by B. E. Stevenson), pp. 99-125 



58 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Few modem readers can regard the sermons of Jonathan Edwards 
as anything but documents of historical interest. It is quite worth 
study to read at first-hand one or two sermons about which so many 
careless generalizations have been made. The chief points of interest 
are the theology as it stands in his own living words, and his rhetorical 
method, which is an admirable exercise of forensic discourse. 

Read Harriet Beecher Stowe's " The Minister's Wooing " and 
" Oldtown Folks " (especially chap. ) for a faithful portrait of one 
of Edwards's chief successors (see pp. 305-308). 

Read Franklin's " Autobiography " for its revelation of personal 
characteristics : his continued emphasis on usefulness ; his refusal to 
allow his emotions to carry him away (whether anger, love, religious 
fervor, or desire for revenge) ; his willingness to act unscrupulously 
for what he felt was a good end ; his self-analysis (in other places 
than the passage on the virtues); his public spirit. 

Read Franklin's "Autobiography" for its literary characteristics: 
his emulation of Addison's style (compare passages of this and the 
Spectator) \ his respect for Pope and his likeness in use of apothegms ; 
his similarity to Chesterfield in point of view and use of homely detail. 
Contrast Franklin's style with Irving's or Cooper's. 



CHAPTER V 

CREVEC(EUR, THE "AMERICAN FARMER" 

By 1750 the thirteen colonies had all been long established, 
and the straggling community on the Atlantic seaboard from 
Maine to Georgia had an individuality of its own. The America- 
to-be was at once young and old. There were old towns, old 
churches, old homes, old families. There was an aristocracy 
with memories that went back to England, but with roots firmly 
planted in American soil. Yet, withal, the country was so vast 
and the people on it so few that there was unlimited chance 
for the energetic man of real ability. It was a new land of 
untold opportunities ; all its apparent maturity was the matur- 
ity of a well-born young gentleman who has just become of 
age and whose real career is all' before him. The old age of 
the Old World was something very different, for it was based 
chiefly on the control of the land — of the actual soil and 
stream and forest. Edmund Burke in 1775 said in his "Speech 
on Conciliation of the American Colonies " that if the attempt 
were made to restrict the population of the colonies the 
people could swarm over the mountain ranges and resettle 
there in a vast plain five hundred miles square. However fair 
the estimate was to the land in actual English possession, that 
statement was about as far as the imagination of an English- 
man accustomed to smaller dimensions could then go, or as big 
a figure as he could dare to hope his fellow-members of Parlia- 
ment would believe ; for in those days, as to-day, there were not 
in England or France five square miles of land out of owner- 
ship, and very little that was not in the possession of a few 
great proprietors. As the control of government was largely in 
the same hands, the great mass of the people could neither 
59 



6o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

freely enjoy the fruits of their own labor, which were pitilessly 
reduced by rents and taxes, nor make any effective peaceful 
protest in behalf of political change. The American Revolution 
was the voice of the colonies protesting against the possible 
repetition of such conditions on this side the water, and the 
French Revolution was the harsh voice of a downtrodden 
people calling for redress. 

No man could better appreciate the promise of life in America 
than one who had felt the oppression of the old conditions 
and had then enjoyed the freedom of the new ones. In the 
same years when the wiser leaders in the colonies were view- 
ing with alarm the aggressive and mistaken policies of George 
III and his ministers, a young Frenchman, educated in "^ Eng- 
land, came over to this country, settled and prospered on his 
own land, and was so delighted with his life as a farmer and 
a citizen that he could not refrain from making a record of 
his happy circumstances. This was Michel Guillaume St. John 
de Crevecoeur, and his book was the " Letters from an Ameri- 
can Farmer," published in London in 1782, though written 
almost entirely before the outbreak of the Revolution. It is 
made up of twelve so-called letters addressed to an imaginary 
English friend. Two of these are about his direct experience 
on his own acres in the middle colonies ; five are on the people 
and the country in northern colonies, as he found them in 
Marthas Vineyard, Nantucket, and Cape Cod ; one is drawn 
from observations in South Carolina ; and the other four are 
less related to definite places, three being on nature themes, 
and one — the most important of all — on the ever-new question, 
" What is an American .? " 

With industry and frugality hardly less than Franklin's, 
Crevecoeur had also a certain power of poetic imagination 
and fresh enthusiasm. He was writing from a kind of earthly 
paradise. Seen against the background of unhappy France, 
the rights to own, to earn, and to have a voice in governing 
himself seemed almost too good to be true. He had no 



CRfiVECCEUR, THE "AMERICAN FARMER" 6 1 

misconceptions about the hard labor which was necessary to 
make a farm productive; but he enjoyed work because he knew 
that he could enjoy the fruits of it, and he enjoyed it all the 
more because he knew that in making an ear of corn grow 
where none had grown before he was the best kind of pioneer. 
To his sorrow he knew much about the ugliness of an old 
civilization ; it was with the zest of a youthful lover that he 
wrote about the beauty of this new country's inexperience. 

He felt a perfect satisfaction in his own state of mind and 
body. Although he was a newcomer, he had a sense of belong- 
ing to the district as complete as Emerson, with two centuries 
of ancestry, was later to have ; and, with a pride equal to 
Emerson's in " Hamatreya," could "affirm, my actions smack 
of the soil." With his baby boy ingeniously rigged before him 
on the plow, he reckoned the increase of his fields, herds, 
flocks, — even his hives, — and acknowledged his inferiority 
" only to the Emperor of China, ploughing as an example to 
his kingdom." Then, looking beyond his own little acreage, 
he hinted at future industries. He was tilling the surface ; 
there must be further treasures below. He and his neighbors 
were weaving the natural wool ; some chemist must make and 
prepare colors. Commerce must follow on the heels of abundant 
production ; " the avenues of trade are infinite." And in time 
the deep vast of the West, about which men had yet such feeble 
and timid fancies, must be explored and subjugated in its turn. 

Here we have, in some measure, regained the ancient dignity of our 
species : our laws are simple and just ; we are a race of cultivators ; 
our cultivation is unrestrained, and therefore everything is prosperous 
and flourishing. For my part I had rather admire the ample barn of 
one of our opulent farmers, who himself felled the first tree in his 
plantation, and was first founder of his settlement, than study the 
dimension of the temple of Ceres. I had rather record the progressive 
steps of this industrious farmer, throughout all the stages of his labor 
and other operations, than examine how modern Italian convents can 
be supported without doing anything but singing and praying. 



62 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Moreover, above all the material resources of field, forest, 
and mountain, he was glad for the human stream which was 
flowing into America to fertilize them. The thrifty people who 
were shrewd and bold enough to come over from Great Britain 
and northern Europe were to profit by nature's gifts, and in 
the experience were to be welded " into one of the finest sys- 
tems of population which has ever appeared." If it is fair to 
say that the history of immigration to America falls into three 
general periods, Crevecoeur was writing about the very midst 
of the middle period, from 1675 to 1875. First had been a 
half century when only the strongest spirit of adventure or the 
strongest desire for freedom could impel men to attempt the 
conquest of an untried world. Every Englishman who came 
over and every American born here was conscious of the need 
of more hands to work, and all were eager for more English- 
men, and yet more, to help in the gigantic undertaking. In 
the last forty years, with the taking up of all the available land 
and the manning of the industries, the millions who have 
flooded in, not alone from England or Great Britain but mainly 
from southern Europe and the near East, have arrived as new 
mouths to feed. The problem has been not so much how they 
could help America as how America could take care of them ; 
and with their arrival a feeling of perplexity and alarm has 
arisen such as was expressed in 1892 by Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
in his "Unguarded Gates": 

. . . Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, 

And through them presses a wild motley throng — 

Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, 

Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, 

Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav, 

Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn ; 

These bringing with them unknown gods and rites. 

Those, tiger passions here to stretch their claws. 

In street and alley what strange tongues are loud, 

Accents of menace alien to our air. 

Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew 1 



CREVECGEUR, the "AMERICAN FARMER" 63 

O Liberty, white Goddess ! is it well 
To leave the gates unguarded ? . . . 

Have a care 
Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn 
And trampled in the dust. . . . 

But Crevecoeur was living between these two periods. The 
first conquest of the Eastern woods and fields had been made. 
America was known to be a land of plenty, and as yet there 
was more than plenty for all the newcomers from England 
and the neighboring countries of northern Europe. There 
seemed to be no limit to its resources. And so he wrote : 

What, then, is the American, this new man ? He is neither a Euro- 
pean, nor the descendant of a European : hence that strange mixture 
of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could point out to 
you a family, whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife was 
Dutch, whose son married a Frenchwoman, and whose present four 
sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an American, 
who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, 
receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the 
new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes 
an American by being received in the broad lap of our great " alma 
mater." Here individuals are melted into a new race of men, whose 
labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. 
Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with 
them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor and industry, which began 
long since in the East. They will finish the great circle. 

There was an artistic strain in this man who could so easily 
kindle with enthusiasm and who could express his enthusiasms 
with such rhythmic eloquence. The special subjects on which 
he could best vent his poetic powers were found in his pas- 
sages and his occasional whole chapters on nature themes — in 
particular the letters on "John Bartram, Botanist," and "The 
Snakes and the Humming Bird." In these it is impossible not 
to feel the resemblances between this early naturalist and his 
successor, Thoreau (see pp. 222-229). While neither was a 



64 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

scientist in the strict sense of the word, neither was content to 
dismiss nature subjects with mere words of general appreciation. 
Both were interested enough to observe in detail and to record 
with some exactness the ways of plants, flowers, birds, and 
insects ; but both were at their best when they were giving way 
to the real zest they had in the enjoyment of the out of doors. 

Who can listen unmoved to the sweet love-tales of our robins, told 
from tree to tree, or to the shrill cat-birds ? The sublime accents of 
the thrush, from on high, always retard my steps, that I may listen to 
the delicious music. . . . The astonishing art which all birds display 
in the construction of their nests, ill-provided as we may suppose them 
with proper tools, their neatness, their convenience, always make me 
ashamed of the slovenliness of our houses. Their love to their dame, 
their incessant, careful attention, and the peculiar songs they address 
to her while she tediously incubates their eggs, remind me of my duty, 
could I ever forget it. Their affection to their helpless little ones is a 
lovely precept ; and, in short, the whole economy of what we call the 
brute creation, is admirable in every circumstance ; and vain man, 
though adorned with the additional gift of reason, might learn from 
the perfection of instinct, how to regulate the follies, and how to tem- 
per the errors, which this second gift often makes him commit. . . . 
I have often blushed within myself, and been greatly astonished, 
when I have compared the unerring path they all follow, — all just, 
all proper, all wise, up to the necessary degree of perfection — with 
the coarse, the imperfect, systems of men. 

For generations the beauties of nature had held small place 
in English literature, because the English men of letters were a 
completely citified set of writers ; and they had received little 
attention in America, partly because England gave American 
writers no reminder and partly because nature in America had 
been chiefly something to struggle with. 

So enthusiastic was Cr^vecoeur over conditions in America, 
and so certain was he that they never would be disturbed in 
any unfortunate way, that the twentieth-century reader looks 
over his pre-Revolution pages with a kind of wistful impatience. 
About many aspects of the material development of the country 



CRfiVECCEUR, THE "AMERICAN FARMER" 65 

Crevecoeur was keenly prophetic. Throughout eleven of the 
letters, evidently written before 1775, he continued in an 
exalted and confident mood. Whether he was presenting the 
" provincial situations, manners and customs " of Nantucket 
and Marthas Vineyard, or of the central Atlantic, or of the 
Southern colonies, his senses and his judgment were equally 
satisfied. Industry prevailed. The wilderness was being con- 
verted into towns, farms, and highways. "A pleasing uniformity 
of decent competence " was a rule of the democracy. The indul- 
gent laws were fair to the laborer and the voter. He seemed to 
feel that the era of prosperity would last till the end of the world. 
His vision of the future was the vision of a man perched in 
the small end of an infinite horn of plenty, with a vista unclouded 
by the hint of any limit to the supply or of any possible con- 
flict between gluttony and hunger. 

In fact, along the whole coast there was only one practice 
which deserved the name of a problem, and that was the 
institution of slavery. Against this, which existed both North 
and South, Crevecoeur protested just as Samuel Sewall and 
John Woolman had done before him, and as Timothy Dwight 
and Joel Barlow in Connecticut and William Pinkney and 
other lawmakers and abolitionists in Maryland and Virginia 
were to do soon after him. Yet, however sincere he was, he 
regarded slavery only as an external blemish rather than as a 
national danger. It was a mistake, but not a menace. It was 
typical of the America of the future that Crevecoeur should 
have had so unquestioning a confidence in the prospect. The 
belief in a " manifest destiny " for America, which is finely 
inspiring for all who will work to bring about a glorious future, 
has been demoralizing to millions who have used a lazy belief 
in it to excuse them from feeling or exercising any responsibility. 

With the twelfth letter came a total change of key. It was 
evidently written long after all the others, after the outburst of 
war, perhaps after his New Jersey property had been burned, 
possibly even during his return voyage to France in the autumn 



66 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of 1780. As a naturalized subject of King George, when well 
on in middle life he had been forced to choose between his 
sworn allegiance and the interests of his fellow-colonists. He 
sympathized with the American cause, though he did not enlist. 
And then in the years that followed he learned (the perennial 
lesson of war time) of the " vanity of human wishes." Unhap- 
pily for the moral of the tale, the latter part of his life was far 
from heroic. In the concluding letter, written quite after the 
fashion of the most sentimental and unreal eighteenth-century 
nature lovers, Crevecoeur decided to abandon the struggle in 
the war zone and to take up life anew with his family among 
the Indians in the West. He would forswear all talk of poli- 
tics, " contemplate nature in her most wild and ample extent," 
and formulate among his adopted neighbors a new system of 
happiness. As a matter of fact, however, his retreat was even 
more complete than this ; for he returned permanently to the 
Continent, lived contentedly in Paris, London, and Munich, 
married his daughter to a French count, wrote volumes on 
Pennsylvania and New York, and memorialized his career as 
a farmer by inditing a paper on potato culture. 

Although such a turn of events resulted in very much of an 
anticlimax, this fact should not make one forget the prophetic 
quality in his " Letters," nor should his failure to predict 
every aspect of modern life throw any shadow on the clearness 
with which he foretold some of the most important of them. 
It is true, of course, that he did not appreciate how tragic were 
to be the fruits of slavery ; that he saw immigration only as a 
desirable supply of labor to a continent which could never be 
overpopulated ; that, writing before the earliest chapter of the 
factory era, he did not dream of the industrial complexities of 
the present. But when he said that the American, sprung from 
Europe but here adopted into a new nation, " ought therefore 
to love this country much better than that wherein either he or 
his forefathers were born," he was saying something that has 
been repeated with new conviction ten thousand times since the 



CRfiVECCEUR, THE "AMERICAN FARMER" 67 

outbreak of the Great War. And when he declared that " the 
American is a new man, who acts upon new principles " he 
was foreshadowing national policies which the world has been 
slow to understand. The possibility of a nation's being too 
proud to fight at the first provocation, and the subordination 
of national interest to the interest of mankind — this is the 
language of the new principles that Crevecoeur was invoking. 
It is nearly a century and a half since he tried to answer the 
question " What is an American ? " Much has happened since 
then. Internally the country has developed to the extent of 
his farthest dreams, and in the world-family, after five great 
wars, it has become one of the greatest of the powers, fulfilling 
so much of his predictions that one speculates in all humility 
on what may be the next steps " for that new race of men 
whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes 
in the world." 

BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

Michel Guillaume St. Jean de Crevecceur. Letters from an 
American Farmer. Written for the information of a friend in 
England. Edited by J. Hector St. John. 1782. 

Available Editions 

Letters from an American Farmer. Ludwig Lewisohn, editor. With 

prefatory note by W. P. Trent. 1904. 
W. B. Blake, editor. In Everyman's Library. 

Biography and Criticism ^ 

BoYNTON, Percy H. A Colonial Farmer's Letters. New Republic, 

June 19, 1915. 
Mitchell, Julia Post. St. Jean de Crevecoeur. 1916. 
Tyler, M. C. Literary History of the American Revolution (1765- 

1783), Vol. IL chap, xxvii. 1897. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the characterization of the American colonies in Burke's 
" Speech on Conciliation." 

Read the letter entitled "What is an American ? " and see how far 
its generalizations apply to the America of to-day. 



68 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Read Zangwill's play " The Melting Pot " in the light of this 
letter on " What is an American ? " 

Read passages which deal with nature for Crevecceur's observation 
on plant and animal life. 

Read the closing essay in comparison with Rousseau's " fimile " 
for its romantic idealization of primitive life. Compare this essay 
with the picture of frontier life as presented in "The Deerslayer" 
or " The Last of the Mohicans." Note the resemblances to 
Chateaubriand's " Rene'." 

Read the opening chapters or divisions of Thoreau's " Walden " 
and compare with the Crevecoeur " Letters" in point of the contrasting 
views on property, labor, and citizenship. 

Read Mary Antin's " The Promised Land " for the differences 
in the America to which Crfevecoeur came and the America which 
she found. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION AND PHILIP FRENEAU 

With the Revolutionary War there was naturally a great 
output of printed matter. Controversial pamphlets, state papers, 
diaries, letters, and journals, plays (with prologues and epi- 
logues), songs, ballads and satires, all swelled the total. No 
one can fully understand the Revolution or the period after 
it who does not read extensively in this material ; yet, taken 
in its length and breadth, the prose and most of the verse 
are important as history rather than as literature. Out of 
the numerous company of writers who were producing while 
Franklin was an aging man and while Crevecoeur was an 
American farmer, one, Philip Freneau, may be considered as 
chief representative, and two others, Francis Hopkinson and 
John Trumbull, deserve a briefer comment. 

Francis Hopkinson (i 737-1 791), the Philadelphian, was 
well characterized in a much-quoted letter from John Adams 
to his wife in August, 1776 : 

At this shop I met Mr. Francis Hopkinson, late a mandamus 
councillor of New Jersey, now a member of the Continental Congress, 
who . . . was liberally educated, and is a painter and a poet. . . . He 
is one of your pretty little, curious, ingenious men. . . . He is genteel 
and well-bred and is very social. I wish I had leisure and tranquillity 
of mind to amuse myself with those elegant and ingenious arts of paint- 
ing, sculpture, statuary, architecture and music. But I have not. 

Undoubtedly Hopkinson's work savors of the dilettante 
throughout; yet part of its historical significance is inherent 
in this fact, for Hopkinson is one of the earliest examples of 
talented versatility in American life. He had virtues to com- 
plement the accomplishments half enviously cited by John 
69 



70 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Adams. He was a learned judge, a stalwart revolutionist, a 
practical man of affairs, and a humorist. 

His collected writings in three volumes were done in the 
best manner of eighteenth-century England. Five sixths of them 
are essays, written not in series, but quite of the Spectator 
type. Three prose satires — "A Pretty Story" (1774), "A 
Prophecy " (1776), and " The New Roof " (1778) — are as im- 
portant a trio as any written by one man in the Revolutionary 
days. The other sixth — his verse — belonged no less to the 
polite literature of the period. There are Miltonic imitations, 
songs, sentiments, hymns, a fable, and a piece of advice to a 
young lady. There are occasional poems, including birthday and 
wedding greetings, dramatic prologues and epilogues, elegies, 
and rimed epitaphs. Verses of these kinds, if they were all 
Hopkinson had written, would indicate a hopeless subservience 
to prevailing English fashions. But Hopkinson was nobody's 
vassal. When he wrote 

My generous heart disdains 

The slave of love to be, 
I scorn his servile chains. 

And boast my liberty, 

he might as truly have asserted his refusal to submit to any 
sort of trammels except at his own option. Into a few imitation 
ballads he poured the new wine of Revolutionary sentiment, 
one of which, " The Battle of the Kegs," with its mocking 
jollity, put good cheer in all colonial hearts in the times that 
tried men's souls. It was his jaunty self-control, the quality of 
heroism without its pompous mannerisms, that set Hopkinson 
off in contrast with his fellows. He was almost the least 
pretentious of them all, yet few were more effective. 

John Trumbull (1750-1831), most talented of the "Hart- 
ford Wits," tried his hand, like Hopkinson, at the con- 
ventional poetical subjects, but, unlike him, the bulk of his 
verse was contained in two long satirical essays: "The Progress 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 71 

of Dulness" (1772 and 1773) and " M'Fingal " (1776 and 
1782). Apparently he had no further ambition for himself or 
other American poets than to 

bid their lays with lofty Milton vie ; 
Or wake from nature's themes the moral song, 
And shine with Pope, with Thompson and with Young. 
This land her Swift and Addison shall view, 
The former honors equalled by the new ; 
Here shall some Shakspeare charm the rising age, 
And hold in magic chains the listening stage ; 
A second Watts shall strike the heavenly lyre, 
And other muses other bards inspire. 

Nevertheless, in these two satires he wrote first from a pro- 
vincial and then from an early national point of view. " The 
Progress of Dulness " is a disquisition on how not to bring 
up children. He chose for his examples Tom Brainless, Dick 
Hairbrain, and Harriet Simper. He put the boys through 
college (Trumbull was a graduate of Yale), making one a dull 
preacher and the other a rake. Harriet, the American counter- 
part of Biddy Tipkin in Steele's "Tender Husband" or 
Arabella in Mrs. Lennox's " The Female Quixote," is fed on 
flattery, social ambition, and the romantic fiction of the hour 
(see p. 103), becomes a coquette and a jilt, and, thrown over 
by Dick, sinks into obscurity as the faded wife of Parson Tom. 
This was homemade satire, democratic in its choice and 
treatment of character, and clearly located in and about New 
Haven, Connecticut. 

So also, and much more aggressively, was the rimed political 
document " M'Fingal," an immensely popular diatribe at the 
Tory of the Revolution — his attitude, his general demeanor, 
and his methods of argument. It recounts the events of a day 
in, a New England town which was torn by the dissensions 
between the rival factions in the opening days of the conflict, 
and describes in detail the ways in which this particularly 
offensive Tory was driven to cover. The modern reader must 



72 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

bring to it a good deal of student interest if he expects to 
complete the reading and understand it, even with the aid of 
Trumbull's copious footnotes. For the moment it was a skill- 
ful piece of journalistic writing. Trumbull knew how to appeal 
to the prejudices of his sympathizers (for controversial war 
writing confirms rather than convinces) ; he knew how to draw 
on their limited store of general knowledge ; and he knew how 
to lead them on with a due employment of literary ingenuities 
like puns, multiple rimes, and word elisions, and a judicious 
resort to rough jocosity and vituperation. "M'Fingal" was war 
literature with all its defects of passion, uncandor, and specious- 
ness, but the score or more of editions through which it ran be- 
fore 1800 are evidence that it reached the low mark at which it 
was aimed. If it had the faults of its kind, so in later years did 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin " and " Mr. Britling sees it Through." 

This most representative poet of the Revolutionary period 
was Philip Freneau, who lived from 1752 to 1832 and who 
was active in authorship for forty-five years, from 1770 on. 
He was a graduate of Princeton College in 1771, gained a 
sudden reputation as a political satirist in 1775, and lived 
a strangely varied life from then till well into the nineteenth 
century. For three years he lived in Santa Cruz and Bermuda. 
In 1779 he sailed to the Azores, and for a six-year period at 
a later time he was engaged in Atlantic coast trade. From 
1784 to 1807 he went the circle in five stages as editor, sea- 
man, editor, farmer, and seaman again. Everything he did he 
seems to have done hard, and nothing held him long. It is a 
kind of life which does not seem surprising in a man who has 
often been called ''Poet of the Revolution," for he wrote as 
vigorously as he sailed or farmed or edited, and he plowed 
his political satires quite as deep and straight as he plowed 
the seas and the furrows of his fields. After his bitter experi- 
ence of three months on a British prison ship, he blazed out 
with a savage flame of verse which has carried the horrors of 
this particular form of war brutality down the centuries to greet 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 73 

the " atrocities " of the present. When the editors of rival 
papers and rival parties annoyed him he scourged them with 
a savageness of attack which was notable even in a day when 
journalism knew no restraint and recognized no proprieties. 
Freneau had at least one title to the friendship of Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, who loved " a good hater." 

This vehement side of his life resulted in a generous amount 
of war poetry which would be remembered — or forgotten — with 
the best of the rest of its kind if it were all that he had written. 
In a brief survey like the present chapter it can therefore serve 
the double purpose of illustrating the verse of the Revolution 
and of representing a less important aspect of his whole work. 
In this respect it is comparable to the Civil- War and anti- 
slavery poetry of Whittier. Sometimes this verse is full of 
scorn, as in " The Midnight Consultations," in which Lord 
Howe is ridiculed as presiding over a council which arrives at 
the following heroic conclusion : 

Three weeks — ye gods ! — nay, three long years it seems 
Since roast beef I have touched, except in dreams, 
In sleep, choice dishes to my view repair, 
, Waking, I gape and champ the empty air, — 

On neighbouring isles uncounted cattle stray. 

Fat beeves, and swine, an ill-defended prey — 

These are fit victims for my noonday dish, 

These, if my soldiers act as I would wish. 

In one short week should glad your maws and mine ; 

On mutton we will sup —r- on roast beef dine. 

Sometimes it is full of the hate which war always engenders. 
Freneau wrote no more bitterly about the king, Lord North, 
and the leading generals in active service against the colonists 
than did Jonathan Odell — the foremost Tory satirist — about 
Washington and his associates. As the war went on, and the 
likelihood of American success became stronger, Freneau's 
tpne softened, as he could well afford to have it, and in such 



74 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

a product as " The Political Balance " he wrote with nothing 
more offensive than the mockery of a rather ungenerous victor. 
This poem, characterized by well-maintained humor, is one of 
the best of its kind. It represents Jove as one day looking 
over the book of Fate and of coming to an incomplete account 
of Britain, for the Fates had neglected to reveal the outcome 
of the war. In order to find out for himself, he directs Vulcan 
to make an exact model of the globe, borrows the scales from 
Virgo, and plans to foretell the future by setting the mother 
country on one side and the States on the other. When, after 
many difficulties, the experiment is tried, of course the States 
overbalance the little island. Then, to make sure, he adds the 
foreign dominions on Britain's side. 

But the gods were confounded and struck with surprise, 
And Vulcan could hardly believe his own eyes ! 

For (such was the purpose and guidance of fate) 
Her foreign dominions diminish'd her weight — 
By which it appeared, to Britain's disaster, 
Her foreign possessions were changing their master. 

Then as he replac'd them, said Jove with a smile — 
" Columbia shall never be rul'd by an isle — 
But vapours and darkness around her shall rise. 
And tempests conceal her a while from our eyes ; 

" So locusts in Egypt their squadrons display, 
And rising, disfigure the face of the day ; 
So the moon, at her full, has a frequent eclipse, 
And the sun in the ocean diurnally dips. 

" Then cease your endeavors, ye vermin of Britain — 
(And here, in derision, their island he spit on) 
'T is madness to seek what you never can find, 
Or think of uniting what nature disjoin'd ; 

" But still you may flutter awhile with your wings. 
And spit out your venom, and brandish your stings. 
Your hearts are as black, and as bitter as gall, 
A curse to yourselves, and a blot on the Ball." 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 75 

After the successful completion of the war it was only natural 
that Americans in their rejoicing should imagine the glorious 
future that awaited their new independence. The more vivid 
their imaginations were, the more splendid were the prophecies 
they indulged in. As we read over the records of their lofty 
hopes we are reminded of commencement oratory; and the 
likeness is not unreal, for these post-Revolution poets were in 
fact very like eager college graduates, diploma in hand, looking 
forward to vague but splendid careers. It was in these poems 
too that the germs of Fourth of July oratory first took root — 
the oratory described by James Fenimore Cooper in his " Home 
as Found " (chap, xxi) : 

There were the usual allusions to Greece and Rome, between the 
republics of which and that of this country there exists some such 
affinity as is to be found between a horse-chestnut and a chestnut 
horse, or that of mere words; and a long catalogue of national 
glories that might very well have sufficed for all republics, both of 
antiquity and of our own time. But when the orator came to speak 
of the American character, and particularly of the intelligence of the 
nation, he was most felicitous, and made the largest investments in 
popularity. According to his account of the matter, no other people 
possessed a tithe of the knowledge, or a hundredth part of the honesty 
and virtue of the very community he was addressing ; and after labor- 
ing for ten minutes to convince his hearers that they already knew 
everything, he wasted several more in trying to persuade them to 
undertake further acquisitions of the same nature. 

These elephantine poems were written each in several 
"books," to each one of which was prefixed an outline which, 
in the language of the day, was called " the argument." Here 
is a part of the outline for Book VH of Timothy Dwight's 
"Greenfield Hill" (1794): 

Happiness of U. S. contrasted to Eastern Despotism. Universal 
Prevalence of Freedom. Unfortified, and therefore safe, state of U. S. 
Influence of our state of Society on the Mind. Public Property 
employed for the Public Benefit. Penal Administrations improved 



76 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

by Benevolence. Policy enlarges its scope. Knowledge promoted. 
Improvements in Astronomical and other Instruments of Science. 
Improvements of the Americans, in Natural Philosophy — Poetry — 
Music — and Moral Science. State of the American Clergy. Manners 
refined. Artificial Manners condemned. American Women. Cultiva- 
tion advanced. Other Nations visit this country, and learn the nature, 
and causes, of our happiness. Conclusion. 

And here is a part of the argument to Book IX of Joel Bar- 
low's " Columbiad," in which he demonstrates that the present 
government of America is a culmination of all human progress : 

. . . the ancient and modern states of the arts and of society, Cru- 
sades, Commerce, Hanseatic League, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, 
Galileo, Herschel, Descartes, Bacon, Printing Press, Magnetic Needle, 
Geographic Discoveries, Federal System in America. 

Freneau had shared all this prophetic enthusiasm, and had 
expressed it even before the war, partly in an actual commence- 
ment poem on " The Rising Glory of America " and partly 
in a series of eighteen " Pictures of Columbus." Just after 
graduation he had written : 

I see, I see 
A thousand Kingdoms rais'd, cities and men 
Num'rous as sand upon the ocean shore ; 
Th' Ohio then shall glide by many a town 
Of note ; and where the Mississippi stream 
By forests shaded now runs weeping on. 
Nations shall grow, and States not less in fame 
Than Greece and Rome of old ; we too shall boast 
Our Alexanders, Pompeys, heroes, kings. 
That in the womb of time yet dormant lye 
Waiting the joyful hour of life and light. 

After the war, however, he did not rejoin the increasing 
choir who were singing this kind of choral. His most interest- 
ing bit of prophecy, which must have seemed to his contem- 
poraries to be a piece of the airiest fancy, has been amazingly 
verified more than a century after he wrote it. This is 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION tj 

" The Progress of Balloons," written in the jaunty tone of 
" The Political Balance " : 

The stagemen, whose gallopers scarce have the power 

Through the dirt to convey you ten miles in an hour, 

When advanc'd to balloons shall so furiously drive 

You '11 hardly know whether you 're dead or alive. 

The man who at Boston sets out with the sun, 

If the wind should be fair, may be with us at one. 

At Gunpowder Ferry drink whiskey at three 

And at six be at Edentown, ready for tea. 

(The machine shall be order'd, we hardly need say, 

To travel in darkness as well as by day) 

At Charleston by ten he for sleep shall prepare. 

And by twelve the next day be the devil knows where. 

If Britain should ever disturb us again, 
(As they threaten to do in the next George's reign) 
No doubt they will play us a set of new tunes. 
And pepper us well from their fighting balloons. 

Such wonders as these from balloons shall arise — 
And the giants of old that assaulted the skies 
With their Ossa on Pelion, shall freely confess 
That all they attempted was nothing to this. 

This, of course, was newspaper poetry, and Freneau, for long 
years of his life, was a newspaper man. Even his lines " To 
Sir Toby," a slaveholding sugar-planter in Jamaica, spirited as 
they are, are in effect an open letter in protest against human 
slavery, and they were printed in the National Gazette in 1792. 

The really poetical work of Freneau, however, which entitles 
him to an attention greater than that for his fellows, had nothing 
to do with political or military events of the day. They were 
his shorter poems on American tiature and American tradition ; 
and a distinguishing feature of them was that they were differ- 
ent from the English poetry of the time, in form as well as in 
content. As a young man Freneau had set out on his career 



78 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

by writing after the style of Milton and Dryden and Pope and 
their lesser imitators. This was absolutely natural. Until after 
the Revolution, America was England ; and it was more nearly 
like England in speech and in thought than much of Scotland 
and Ireland are to-day. All the refinements of America were 
derived from English sources ; practically all the colonists* 
reading was from English authors. But after the Revolution 
there came a strong reaction of feeling. We can look to 
Freneau's own rimes (journalistic ones again) for an explana- 
tion of the new and native quality of his later verse ; they are 
called " Literary Importation," and they conclude as follows : 

It seems we had spirit to humble a throne, 
Have genius for science inferior to none. 
But hardly encourage a plant of our own : 

If a college be planned 

'T is all at a stand 
'Till to Europe we send at a shameful expense, 
To send us a bookworm to teach us some sense. 

Can we never be thought to have learning or grace 
Unless it be brought from that horrible place 
Where tyranny reigns with her impudent face ; 

And popes and pretenders 

And sly faith-defenders 
Have ever been hostile to reason and wit, 
Enslaving a world that shall conquer them yet. 

'T is a folly to fret at the picture I draw : 

And I say what was said by a Doctor Magraw ; 

" If they give us their Bishops, they '11 give us their law." 

How that will agree 

With such people as we, 
Let us leave to the learned to reflect on awhile, 
And say what they think in a handsomer stile. 

As a consequence of this feeling that America should be 
different, the tendency grew to seek out native subject matter 
and to cease conscious imitation of English literary models. 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 79 

For the next half century American authors were contending, 
every now and then, that native themes should occupy their atten- 
tion, and a good deal of verse and prose was written with this 
idea in mind. Most of it was more conscientious than interest- 
ing, for literature, to be genuinely effective, must be produced not 
to demonstrate a theory but to express what is honestly in the 
author's mind. The first step toward achieving nationality in 
American writing was, therefore, to achieve new and independ- 
ent habits of national thinking. The Irish mind, for example, 
is basically different from the English mind, and Irish literature 
has therefore a long and beautiful history of its own, in spite 
of the fact that Ireland is near to England and subject to it. 
But the Australian is simply a transplanted English-speaking, 
English-thinking mind, and Australia has consequently produced 
no literature of which the world is yet aware. 

Now Freneau was a naturally independent thinker. He was 
educated and well read in the best of English and classical lit- 
erature. But unlike most of his fellow authors, he was not a 
city man, nor a teacher, preacher, or lawyer. His hands were 
hardened by the steersman's wheel and the plow, and doubt- 
less much of his verse — or at least the inspiration for it — 
came to him on shipboard or in the field rather than in the 
library. In the midst of the crowd he was an easy man to stir 
up to fighting pitch. All his war verse shows this. Yet when 
he was alone and undisturbed he inclined to placid meditation, 
and he expressed himself in the simplest ways. As a young 
man he wrote a little poem called " Retirement." It is the kind 
of thing that many other eighteenth-century poets — confirmed 
city dwellers — wrote in moments of temporary world-weariness ; 
but Freneau's life-story shows that he really meant it : 

A cottage I could call my own 

Remote from domes of care ; 
A little garden, wall'd with stone, 
The wall with ivy overgrown, 

A limpid fountain near, 



8o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Would more substantial joys afford, 

More real bliss impart 
Than all the wealth that misers hoard, 
Than vanquish'd worlds, or worlds restor'd — 

Mere cankers of the heart ! 

And there was another poem of his youth which told a secret 
of his real character. This was " The Power of Fancy," an 
imitation of Milton in its form, but genuinely Freneau's in its 
sentiment. The best of his later work is really a compound of 
these suggestions — poems of fancy composed in retirement. 
Thus he wrote on "The Indian Burying Ground," interpreting 
the fact that 

The Indian, when from life releas'd. 

Again is seated with his friends 
And shares again the joyous feast, 

instead of being buried recumbent as white men are. And thus 
he wrote in '" To a Caty-did," " The Wild Honeysuckle," and 
" On a Honey Bee," little lyrics of nature and natural life, 
which were almost the first verse written in America based 
on native subject matter and expressed in simple, direct, and 
unpretentious form. 

Nathaniel Ames, in one of his early almanacs, recorded 
soberly : 

MAY 

Now Winters rage abates, now chearful Hours 
Awake the Spring, and Spring awakes the Flowers. 
The opening Buds salute the welcome Day, 
And Earth relenting, feels the genial Ray. 
The Blossoms blow, the Birds on Bushes sing; 
And Nature has accomplish'd all the Spring. 

This was perfectly conventional and perfectly indefinite ; not a 
single flower, bud, blossom, bird, or bush is specified. The six 
lines amount to a general formula for spring and would apply 
equally well to Patagonia, Italy, New England, or northern 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 8 1 

Siberia. Mr. R. Lewis, who wrote on "A Journey from 
Patapsco to Annapolis" in 1730, improves on this: 

First born of Spring, here the Pacone appears. 

Whose golden Root a silver Blossom rears. 

In spreading Tufts see there the Crowfoot, blue, 

On whose green Leaves still shines a globous Dew ; 

Behold the Cinque-foil, with its dazling Dye 

Of flaming Yellow, wounds the tender Eye. 

But there enclos'd the grassy Wheat is seen 

To heal the aching Sight with cheerful Green. 

Lewis mentions definite fiowers, colors, and characteristics, but 
he never misses a chance to tuck in a conventional adjective or 
participle, and he is led by them into weaving the extravagant 
fancy of an eye made to ache by flaming and dazzling colors, 
and healed by the cheerful green of the wheat field. In con- 
trast to these, Freneau's little nature poems are as exact as the 
second and as simple as the subject on which he writes : 

In a branch of willow hid 
Sings the evening Caty-did : 
From the lofty locust bough 
Feeding on a drop of dew. 
In her suit of green array'd 
Hear her singing in the shade, 

Caty-did, Caty-did, Caty-did. 

Such simplicity as this does not seem at all remarkable 
to-day, but if it be compared with the fixed formalities that 
belonged to almost all the verse of Freneau's time it will stand 
out as a remarkable exception. 

On account of the two kinds of poetry which Freneau pub- 
lished he has often been given misleading titles by his admirers. 
Those who have been interested in him mainly or exclusively 
from the historical point of view have christened him the 
" Poet of the American Revolution." This is unfair because of 
the implication that he gave his best energy to this and had no 
other right to distinction. Even as a journalist he was more 



82 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

than poet of the Revolution, since he wrote on local and timely 
themes for many years after its close. This designation does 
not claim enough for him. The other title is defective for the 
opposite reason, that it claims too much. This is the " Father 
of American Poetry." Such a sweeping phrase ought to be 
avoided resolutely. It is doubly false, in suggesting that there 
was no American poetry before he wrote and that everything 
since has been derived from him. The facts are that he had a 
native poetic gift which would have led to his writing poetry 
had there never been a war between the colonies and England, 
but that when the war came on he was one of the most effec- 
tive penmen on his side ; that entrance into the field of public 
affairs diverted him from the paths of quiet life ; that after the 
war he continued both kinds of writing. He never ceased wholly 
to think and write about "affairs," but more and more he specu- 
lated on the future, dreamed of the picturesque past, and played 
with themes of graceful and tender sentiment. He is very much 
worth reading as a commentator on his own times, and he is no 
less worth reading for the beauty of many poems quite without 
reference to the time or place in which they were written. 

The long and fruitful colonial period must not be overlooked 
by any honest student of American literature, yet it may fairly 
be regarded as no more than a preparatory stage. It has the 
same relationship to the whole story as do the ancestry, boy- 
hood, and education to the development of an individual. In 
the broad and brief survey attempted in these chapters a few 
leading facts have been reviewed about the youth of America : 
(i) Everything characteristic of the early settlers was derived 
directly from England, those in the South representing the 
aristocratic traditions of king and court, and those in the North 
reflecting the democratic revolt of the Puritans. As a natural 
consequence of these differences the writing of books soon 
waned in Virginia and the neighboring colonies, but developed 
consistently in Massachusetts and New England. (2) The 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 83 

attempt of the Puritans to force all New Englanders to think 
the same thoughts and worship in the same way was unsuc- 
cessful from the start, and the most interesting writers of the 
seventeenth century reveal the spread of disturbing influences. 
The first three chosen as examples are Thomas Morton, the 
frank and unscrupulous enemy of the Puritans ; Nathaniel Ward, 
a sturdy Puritan who was alarmed at the growth of anti-Puritan 
influences ; and Roger Williams, a deeply religious preacher, 
who rebelled against the control of the Church in New England 
just as he and others had formerly rebelled in the mother 
country. (3) Even in the first half century a good deal of verse 
was written: sometimes, as in the case of "The Day of Doom," 
as a mere rimed statement of Puritan theology ; but sometimes, 
as in the case of Anne Bradstreet and her followers, as an 
expression of real poetic feeling. (4) With the passage to the 
eighteenth century the community was clearly slipping from 
the grasp of the Puritans. Evidence is ample from three types 
of colonists : the Mathers, who were fighting a desperate but 
losing battle to retain control ; Samuel Sewall, who, although 
a Puritan, was willing to accept reasonable changes ; and Mrs. 
Sarah Kemble Knight, who said little at the time, but in her 
private journals showed the existence of growing disrespect for 
the old habits of thought. (5) Benjamin Franklin, whose work 
is more valuable than that of any of his predecessors, is also 
completely representative of the complete swing away from reli- 
gious enthusiasm to a hard-headed worldliness which was pre- 
vailing in England in the eighteenth century. (6) On the other 
hand, Crevecoeur, writing just before the Revolution, sounded 
the note of thanksgiving to the Lord that America was differ- 
ent from the Old World, and emphasized what were the condi- 
tions of life that were worth fighting to save. (7) Finally, out 
of all the roster of talented writers during the Revolutionary 
War, Freneau was selected as the most gifted poet of the period, 
both as an indirect recorder of the conflict and as an author of 
poetry on native themes in no way related to the war. 



84 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

BOOK LIST 
General References 

Adams, H, B. Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia. 1888. 
FiSKE, John. The Critical Period of American History. Chap. ii. 1888. 
Otis, William Bradley. American Verse, 1 625-1 807. 1909. 
Patterson, Samuel White. The Spirit of the American Revolution 

as Revealed in the Poetry of the Period (contains good bibliography). 

191 5. 
Richardson, C. F. American Literature. Chaps, i, vi, viii. 1887. 
Tucker, S. M. In chap, ix of Cambridge History of American Litera- 
ture, Vol. I, Bk. L 
Tyler, M. C. The Literary History of the American Revolution, 

chaps, ix, xix, xx, xxi, xxvi, xxviii, xxix, xxxi, xxxii. 1897. 
Van Tyne, C. H. The Loyalists in the American Revolution. 1902. 
Wendell, Barrett. Literary History of America, chaps, vii, viii, ix. 

1900. 
For spirit of the times read Familiar Letters of John and Abigail 

Adams. 1876. 

General Bibliography 

Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 457-467. 

Individual Authors 

Francis Hopkinson. Miscellaneous Essays and Occasional Writings. 
1792. 3 vols. The latter half of the third volume contains in 
separate paging (1-204) his Poems on Several Subjects. (There has 
been no reprinting.) 
Available Edition 

The Old Farm and the New Farm: a Political Allegory (edited by 
B. J. Lossing). 1864. 
Biography and Criticism 

HiLDEBURN, C. R. A Biographical Sketch of Francis Hopkinson. 

1878. 
Marble, Mrs. A. R. Francis Hopkinson, Man of Affairs and Letters. 

JVew England Magazine^ Vol. XXVII, p. 289. 
Tyler, M. C. The Literary History of the American Revolution, 
Vol. I, chap, viii, pp. 163-17 1 ; chap, xii, pp. 279-292 ; chap, xxii, 
pp. 487-490 ; and Vol. II, chap, xxx, pp. 130-157. 
Collections 

Boynton, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 35-42, 604-606. 

Cairns, W. B. Early American "Writers, pp. 372-383. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 209-219. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 
HI, pp. 236-251. 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 85 

John Trumbull. Poetical Works. 2 vols. Hartford, 1820. Progress 
of Dulness. Part I, The Rare Adventures of Tom Brainless, 1772; 
Part II, The Life and Character of Dick Hairbrain of Finical Mem- 
ory, 1773 ; Part III, The Adventures of Miss Harriet Simper, 1773. 
M'Fingal : a Modem Epic Poem. Canto I ; or. The Town Meeting 
(includes what is now Cantos I and II). 1776. Completed with 
Cantos III and IV. 1782. 

Available Edition 

M'Fingal; an Epic Poem (edited by B. J. Lossing). i860, 1864, 1881. 

Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 43-57, 58-88, 606-610, 

611-614. 
Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 395-408. 
DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 308-319. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 

Ill, pp. 422-429 ; Vol. IV, pp. 89-92. 

Philip Freneau. Poems. Printed for the Princeton Historical Asso- 
ciation. F. L. Pattee, editor. 1 902-1 907. 3 vols. 

Available Edition 

Poems of Philip Freneau relating to the American Revolution. 
E. A. Duyckinck, editor. 1865. 

Bibliography 

A volume compiled by Victor H. Paltsits. 1903. 

Biography and Criticism 

Austin, Mary S. Philip Freneau, the Poet of the Revolution. 1901. 
DeLancey, E. F.- Philip Freneau, the Huguenot Patriot-Poet, etc. 

Proceedings of the Huguenot Soc. of Amer., Vol. II, No. 2. 1891. 
Forman, Samuel E. The Political Activities of Philip Freneau. 
Johns Hopkins University Studies, Ser. 20, Nos. 9, 10. 1902. 

Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 89-117, 614-618. 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 431-448. 

Duyckinck, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 327-348. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 

Ill, pp. 445-457- 

Timothy Dwight. There are no recent editions of Dwight. These 
appeared originally as follows : The Conquest of Canaan, 1 784 ; The 
Triumph of Infidelity, 1788 ; Greenfield Hill, 1794; Travels in New 
England and New York, 1 823. 



86 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Biography and Criticism 

DwiGHT, W. T. and S. E. Memoir prefixed to Dwight's Theology. 

4 vols. 
Sprague, W. B. The Life of Timothy Dwight, in Vol. XIV of 

Sparks's Library of American Biography. 
Sprague, W. B. Annals of the American Pulpit, Vol. II. 
Tyler, M. C. Three Men of Letters, pp. 72-127. 1895. 
Introduction to the Poems of Phihp Freneau (edited by F. L. Pattee), 

Vol. I, pp. c, ci. 1902. 

Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 1 18-124, 618-621. 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 409-420. 

Duyckinck, E. a. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 357-365- 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 

Ill, pp. 426-429 and 463-483. 

Joel Barlow. His epic is accessible only in early editions. His poetical 
work appeared originally as follows : The Vision of Columbus, 1787; 
The Columbiad, 1807; Hasty Pudding, 1847. 

Biography and Criticism 

Todd, C. B. Life and Letters of Joel Barlow. 1886. 
Tyler, M. C. Three Men of Letters, pp. 131-180. 1895. 

Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 125-135, 621-624. 

Cairns, W. B. Early American Writers, pp. 421-430. 

Duyckinck, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 391-404. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 

Ill, pp. 422-429, and Vol. IV, pp. 46-57. 

Literary Treatment of the Period 
Drama 

In Representative Plays by American Dramatists (edited by M. J. 

Moses), Vol. I. 1918. 
The Group ; a Farce, by Mrs. Mercy Warren. 
The Battle of Bunker's Hill, by H. H. Brackenridge. 
The Fall of British Tyranny; or, American Liberty, by John 

Leacock. 
The Politician Outwitted, by Samuel Low. 
The Contrast, by Royall Tyler.i 
Andr^, by William Dunlap.^ 

^ Also in Represetitative American Plays (edited by A. H. Quinn). 1917. 



I 



THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION 8/ 

Fiction 

Churchill, Winston. Richard Carvel. 
Cooper, J. F. Lionel Lincoln ; or, The Leaguer of Boston. 
Cooper, J. F. The Pilot. 
Cooper, J. F. The Spy. 
Ford, P. L. Janice Meredith. 
Harte, Bret. Thankful Blossom. 
Jewett, Sarah Orne. The Tory Lover. 
Kennedy, J. P. Horse Shoe Robinson. 
Mitchell, S. Weir. Hugh Wynne. 

SIMMS, W. Gilmore. The Partisan. ' 

SIMMS, W. Gilmore. The Scout. 
Poetry 

Poems of American History (edited by B. E. Stevenson), pp. 125-265. 
American History by American Poets (edited by M. V. Wallington), 
Vol. I, pp. 125-293. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

In a survey course enough material is presented for Hopkinson, 
Trumbull, Dv^ight, and Barlow^ in the collections mentioned in the 
Book List for this chapter. The only reprint available of Lewis's 
interesting "Journey from Patapsco to Annapolis" is in "American 
Poetry" (P. H. Boynton, editor), pp. 24-29. These poems are 
chiefly significant for the combination of English form and American 
subject matter. 

Compare Trumbull's comments on the education of girls with 
the corresponding passage by Mrs. Malaprop, in Sheridan's " The 
Rivals," and with Fitz-Greene Halleck's comments on the education of 
Fanny, in the poem of that name (see "American Poetry," pp. 127, 
128, and 155, 156). 

Compare Dwight's " Farmer's Advice to the Villagers," " Green- 
field Hill," Pt. VI, with Benjamin Franklin's " The Way to Wealth." 

Compare the nationalistic note in the seventh and ninth books of 
Barlow's " Vision of Columbus " with that in Timrod's " Ethnogenesis " 
and that in Moody's " Ode in Time of Hesitation." Do the dates 
of the three poems suggest a progressive change ? (See " American 
Poetry," pp. 123, 349, and 577.) 

Read Freneau's more bitter war satires in comparison with Jona- 
than Odell's " Congratulation " and " The American Times," for 
which see "American Poetry," pp. 78-83. 



88 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Read Freneau's more jovial war satires in comparison with Whit- 
tier's " Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church " 
("American Poetry," p. 255); John R. Thompson's "On to Rich- 
mond" ("American Poetry," p. 325); Edmimd C. Stedman's " How 
Old Brown took Harper's Ferry" ("American Poetry," p. 317); and 
Lowell's " Biglow Papers." 

Read Freneau's " Pictures of Columbus " in comparison with 
Lowell's "Columbus" ("American Poetry," p. 382); Lanier's "Son- 
nets on Columbus" ("American Poetry," p. 458); and Joaquin Miller's 
" Columbus " ("American Poetry," p. 564). 

" The Progress of Balloons " derives its title from a whole series 
of preceding " progress " poems. Cite others and compare them as 
you can. 

With reference to Freneau's diction in nature passages as com- 
pared with that of Ames and Lewis in the text, read Wordsworth's 
essay on "Poetic Diction" prefatory to the lyrical ballads of 1798, 
with which Freneau agreed and which he anticipated in certain of 
his poems. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EARLY DRAMA 

In the growth of most national literatures the theater hasi 
developed side by side with the drama, the stage doing for the 
play what the printing press did for the essay, poem, and novel. 
But in America, the land of a transplanted civilization, the 
order was changed and the first plays were supplied from 
abroad just as the other forms of literature were. In the history 
of the American stage, therefore, the successive steps were 
the presentation of English plays by American amateurs in 
regular audience rooms with improvised stages ; then the de- 
velopment of semiprofessional and wholly professional com- 
panies who played short seasons at irregular intervals ; then 
the erection of special playhouses ; and finally the formation 
of more permanent professional companies, both English and 
American, — all of which took place in the course of nearly 
two generations before the emergence of any native American 
drama. Recent investigations have so frequently pushed back 
the years of first performances, playhouses, and plays that now 
one can offer such dates only as subject to further revision. 

According to the " Cambridge History of American Litera- 
ture," "there seem to have been theatrical performances in this 
country since 1703." Paul Leicester Ford in his " Washington 
and the Theater" says, "that there was play-acting in New 
York, and in Charleston, South Carolina, before 1702, are 
unquestioned facts." In 17 18 Governor Spottswood of Virginia 
gave an entertainment on the king's birthday, the feature of 
which was a play, probably acted by the students of William 
and Mary College, as there are references to later events of 
this sort. The Virginia governor's patronage bore different 
89 



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Thomas Morton (1575 ?-i646) 
Nathaniel Ward (1578-1652?) 
Roger Williams (1604-1683) 
Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705) 
Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) 
Increase Mather (1639-1723) 
Cotton Mather (1663-1728) 
Samuel Sewall (1652-1730) 
Sarah Kemble Knight (1666-1727) 
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) 
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) 
Michel de Crfevecoeur (1731-1813) 
Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791) 
John Trumbull (1750-1831) 
Philip Freneau (1752-1832) 
Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) 
Joel Barlow (1754-1812) 
Brockden Brown (1771-1810) 
Washington Irving (1783-1859) 
Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867) 
Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) 
J. Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) 
Wm. CuUen Bryant (1794-1878) 



THE EARLY DRAMA 9 1 

fruit from the early indorsement of playing in staid Massa- 
chusetts, for Samuel Sewall recorded in his diary of March 2, 
1 7 14, a protest at the acting of a play in the council chamber. 
"Let not Christian Boston," he admonished, "goe beyond 
Heathen Rome in the practice of Shamefull Vanities." On 
the other hand, Williamsburg, Virginia, had its own theater 
before 1720, New York enjoyed professional acting and a 
playhouse by 1732, and in Charleston, South Carolina, the use 
of the courtroom was frequent in the two seasons before the 
opening of a theater in the winter of 1736. These slight be- 
ginnings, with further undertakings in Philadelphia, doubtless 
gave Lewis Hallam, the London actor, courage to venture over 
with his company in 1752. With his twelve players he brought 
a repertory of twenty plays and eight farces, the majority of 
which had never been presented in America ; and since the year 
of their arrival the American theater has had a consecutive and 
broadening place in the life of the people. 

The beginnings of drama in America, to distinguish them from 
the early life of the theater, are not quite clearly known. The 
first romantic drama, and the first play written by an American 
and produced by a professional company, was Thomas Godfrey's 
"The Prince of Parthia," completed by 1759 and acted in 
1767 at the Southwark Theater, Philadelphia. The first drama 
on native American material — an unproduced problem play — 
was Robert Rogers's " Ponteach," published in London in 1766. 
The first American comedy to be produced by a professional 
company was Royall Tyler's "The Contrast," acted in 1787* 
at the John Street Theater, New York. The first professional 
American playwright was William Dunlap (1766- 18 39), author 
and producer, who wrote, adapted, and translated over sixty 
plays, operas, sketches, farces, and interludes, of which at least 
fifty were produced and nearly thirty have been published. The 
first actor and playwright of more than local prominence was 
John Howard Payne (i 791-18 5 2), more original than Dunlap 
and equally prolific, with one or two great successes and eighteen 



92 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

published plays to his credit. The history of the American 
drama, as yet unwritten, will be a big work when it is fully 
done, for the output has been very large. Three hundred and 
seventy-eight plays are known to have been published by 1830 
and nearly twice that number to have been played by i860. 
In the remainder of this chapter, the aim of which is to induce 
study of plays within the reach of the average college class, 
four dramas will be discussed because they are interesting in 
themselves and because they are early representatives of types 
which still prevail. 

The first is "The Prince of Parthia," a romantic tragedy by 
Thomas Godfrey (1736-1763). He was the son of a scientist, a 
youth of cultured companions, West the painter and Hopkinson 
the poet-composer, and his almost certain attendance at per- 
formances of the American company of actors led him, in 
addition to his juvenile poems, to make his ambitious attempt 
at drama. " The Prince of Parthia " is evidently imitative, and 
yet no more so than most American poems, essays, novels, and 
plays written in the generation to which Godfrey belonged until 
his early death at the age of twenty-seven. The Hallam and 
American companies had played more of Shakespeare than any 
other one thing, somewhat of Beaumont and Fletcher, and more 
or less of Restoration drama ; and these combined influences 
appear in Godfrey's work. There are traces from " Hamlet," 
signs of *' Macbeth," evidences of " The Maid's Tragedy," and 
responses to the Restoration interest in pseudo-oriental subjects. 
' Yet the play should not be dismissed with these comments as 
though they were a condemnation. What is more to the point 
is the fact that " The Prince " is very admirable as a piece of 
imitative writing. The verse is fluent and at times stately. The 
construction as a whole is well considered. The characters are 
consistent, and their actions are based on sufficient motives. 
Many a later American dramatist fell far short of Godfrey both 
in excellence of style and in firmness of structure and character- 
ization. Had Godfrey lived and had he passed out of his 



THE EARLY DRAMA 



93 



natural deference for models, he might have done dramatic 
writing quite equal to that of many a well-known successor. The 
twentieth-century mind is unaccustomed to the "tragedy of 
blood." A play with a king and two princely sons at once in 
love with the same captive maiden, a jealous queen, a vengeful 
stepson, and a court full of intriguing nobles, a story which 
ends with the accumulating deaths of the six leading characters, 
hardly appeals to theatergoers accustomed to dramas which are 
more economical in their material. But Godfrey should be com- 
pared with his own contemporaries, and, all things considered, 
he stands the comparison well. The type of poetic drama he 
attempted reoccurs later in the work of Robert Montgomery Bird, 
Nathaniel Parker Willis, George Henry Boker, and Julia Ward 
Howe, and reappears in the present generation in plays by such 
men as Richard Hovey and Percy Mackaye. 

The second notable play was Robert Rogers's (i73o.?-i795) 
" Ponteach : or the Savages of America," published in London 
in 1766. The fact that it was not produced at the time must 
be laid to managerial timidity rather than to defects in the play, 
for it has some of the merits of Godfrey's work in the details 
and construction. Two reasons^sufficient to put a cautious man- 
ager on guard were its criticism of the English and its treatment 
of the churchman. For the play as a whole is a sharp indict- 
ment of the white man's avarice in his transactions with the 
Indians, in the course of which a Roman Catholic priest is by 
no means the least guilty. Traders, hunters, and governors 
combine in malice and deceit, undermining the character of the 
Indians and at the same time embittering them against their Eng- 
lish conquerors. A play with this burden, written so soon after 
the Seven Years' War, had no more chance of being produced 
than a pacifist production did from 1914 to 1918. Godfrey's 
treatment of the Indians seems at first glance unconvincing, 
but this is chiefly because of the way he made them talk. All 
the savages and all the different types of white rascal hold 
forth in the same elevated rhetorical discourse. This fact, which 



94 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

constitutes a valid criticism, should be tempered by the recollec- 
tion that generations were yet to pass before anything lifelike was 
to be achieved in dialect writing. Cooper's Indians are quite as 
stately in speech as Rogers's. Yet, like Cooper, Rogers endowed 
them with native dignity, self-control, tribal loyalty, and rever- 
ence for age as well as with treachery and the lust for blood. 
If " Ponteach " had been an indictment of the French instead 
of the English, it is a fair guess that American audiences would 
have seen it and greeted it " with universal applause." As an 
Indian play it was followed by many successors — Pocahontas 
alone was the theme of four plays between 1808 and 1848. As 
a race play it broke the trail not only for these but for others 
which branched off to the negro theme — from " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" and "The Octoroon," before the Civil War, to Sheldon's 
"The Nigger," of 191 1. As a problem-purpose play it was 
the first American contribution to a long series which never 
flags entirely and which always multiplies in years when class 
or political feeling runs high. 

The third notable American play — a success of 1787 and 
the first of many successes in its field — was "The Contrast," 
a comedy by Royall Tyler ( 1 7 5 7- 1 8 26) . Its purport is indicated 
in the opening lines of the prologue : 

Exult each patriot heart ! — this night is shewn 

A piece, which we may fairly call our own ; 

Where the proud titles of " My Lord ! Your Grace ! " 

To humble Mr. and plain Sir give place. 

Our Author pictures not from foreign climes 

The fashions, or the follies of the times ; 

But has confin'd the subject of his work 

To the gay scenes — the circles of New York. 

There is a complacency of pioneership in this and a hint at 1 
servility among other playwrights which are not strictly justified | 
by the facts, but the prologue is none the less interesting for j 
this. It is quite as true to its period as the content of the play | 



THE EARLY DRAMA 95 

is, for it displays the independence of conscious revolt, exactly 
the note of Freneau's " Literary Importation " written only two 
years earlier (see p. 78) and a constantly recurrent one in 
American literature for the next fifty years. 

Tyler's play is a comedy of manners setting forth " the 
contrast between a gentleman who has read Chesterfield and 
received the polish of Europe and an unpolished, untraveled 
American." This is reenforced by the antithesis between an 
unscrupulous coquette and a feminine model of all the virtues, 
and between a popinjay servant and a crude countryman, the 
original stage Yankee. As far as the moral is concerned the 
play makes its point not because the good characters are ad- 
mirable but because the bad ones are so vapid. Manly, the hero, 
is well disposed of by his frivolous sister's statement : " His 
conversation is like a rich, old-fashioned brocade, it will stand 
alone ; every sentence is a sentiment " ; and Maria, the heroine, 
is revealed by her own observation that "the only safe asylum 
a woman of delicacy can find is in the arms of a man of honor." 
Yet the contrasts lead to good dramatic situations and to some 
amusing comedy, and the play is further interesting because 
of the fund of allusion to what Tyler considered both worthless 
and worthy English literary influences. The extended reference 
to "The School for Scandal " as seen at the theater by Jonathan 
is acknowledgment enough of Tyler's debt to an English master. 
" The Contrast " is the voice of young America protesting its 
superiority to old England and old Europe. It had been audible 
before the date of Tyler's play, and it was to be heard again 
and again for the better part of a century and in all forms .of 
literature. In drama the most famous play of the type in the 
next two generations was Anna CO. Mowatt's " Fashion " of 
1845. " Contrast " was furthermore a forerunner of many later 
plays which were descriptive without being satirical, a large 
number of which carried New York in their titles as well as in 
their contents. These doubtless looked back quite directly to the 
repeated successes of Pierce Egan's " Life in London," but they 



96 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

had all to acknowledge that Tyler was the early and conspicuous 
playwright who had 

confin'd the subject of his work 
To the gay scenes — the circles of New York. 

The fourth and last play for any detailed comment here is | 
"Andr6" (1798) by William Dunlap (1766-1839). Dunlap 
asked for recognition, as Tyler had done, on nationalistic 
grounds, 

A Native Bard, a native scene displays, 
And claims your candour for his daring lays ; 

and he took heed, as Rogers seems not to have done, of the 
risk he was running in entering the perilous straits of political 
controversy in which " Ponteach " was stranded before it had 
reached the theater : 

O, may no party spirit blast his views, 

Or turn to ill the meanings of the Muse ; 

She sings of wrongs long past. Men as they were, 

To instruct, without reproach, the Men that are ; 

Then judge the Story by the genius shown, 

And praise, or damn it, for its worth alone. 

Party feeling was high at the time over the opposing claims 
of France and England — " The Rival Suitors for America," as 
Freneau called them in his verses of 1795. " Hail Columbia," 
by Joseph Hopkinson, made an immediate hit when sung at 
an actors' benefit less than four weeks after the production of 
" Andr6," and made it by an appeal to broad national feeling. 
And Dunlap, after a slip of sentiment in the first performance, 
kept clear of politics, and showed tact as well as daring by mak- 
ing the Briton heroic, though a spy, and by his fine treatment 
of the unnamed " General," who was evidently Washington. 
Dunlap's play showed a ready appreciation of theatrical effec- 
tiveness. It was the work of a playmaker rather than a poet, 
and the verse had none of the elevation of Godfrey's or Rogers's. 



THE EARLY DRAMA 97 

It was far better than the declamatory stage efforts of the 
Revolutionary years by Brackenridge, Leacock, Low, and 
Mercy Warren, and it was the best early specimen of the 
historical romance for which there is always a ready patronage. 

Dunlap is more significant as an all-round man in the early 
history of the American theater than as a pure dramatist. He 
was a good judge of what the public wanted, and fairly able to 
achieve it. What he could not write he could translate or adapt. 
He turned Schiller's "' Don Carlos " into English, and it failed ; 
but he made a great success of Zschokke's "Abaellino" and 
translated no less than thirteen plays of Kotzebue. A comic 
opera, a dramatic satire, a farce, or an interlude seemed all one 
to him in point of ease or difficulty. From 1796 to 1803 he 
produced more than four plays a year under his own manage- 
ment at the Park Theater in New York. He continued as a 
manager till 1805 and was connected with the theater again in 
1810-1811. Finally, to cap all, in 1832 he published in two 
volumes his " History of the American Theater," which, though 
inaccurate in mahy~detairs, is full of the personal recollections 
of men and events that no amount of exact scholarship could 
now unearth. 

The really auspicious beginnings in American play-writing 
up to 1800 were hardly followed up in the period before the 
interruption of the drama by the Civil War. One man stands 
out, John Howard Payne (i 791-18 5 2). Starting as a precocious 
boy actor and a dramatist whose first play was staged at the 
age of fifteen, he developed into a reputation greater than that 
of Dunlap, but in the perspective of time little more enduring. 
His " Brutus " was played for years by well-known tragedians, 
and his " Charles H," in which Washington Irving had a hand, 
was long successful as a comedy. But he was too prolific for 
high excellence, and he did nothing new. Now and then men 
who wrote abundantly produced single plays of rather high 
merit though of imitative quality, such as Robert Montgomery 
Bird's " Broker of Bogota." There was a generous output, but a 



98 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

low level of production ; tragedies, historical plays, comedies of 
manners, local dramas, social satires, melodramas, and farces 
followed in steady flow. Successful novels of Cooper, Simms, 
Mrs. Stowe, and writers of lesser note were quickly staged, but 
no one of undoubted distinction came to the fore. Writers in 
other fields, like Nathaniel Parker Willis, the essayist, George 
Henry Boker, the poet, and Julia Ward Howe, turned their 
hands at times to play-writing with moderate success. But it 
is significant that the conspicuous names of the period were 
names of actors and producers rather than of playwrights. The 
history of the American stage has been unbroken up to the 
present time, but it was not until near the end of the century 
that the literary material presented on the stage became more 
than a vehicle for the enterprise of managers and the talents 
of actors. This later stage will be briefly discussed in one of 
the closing chapters of this book. 



BOOK LIST 
General References 

Crawford, M. C. The Romance of the American Theater. 191 3. 
DuNLAP, William. History of the American Theater. 1832. 
HuTTON, Laurence. Curiosities of the American Stage. 1891. 
Moses, Montrose J. Famous Actor- Families in America. 1906. 
Moses, Montrose J. The American Dramatist. 1911. 
Seilhamer, G. O. History of the American Theater, 1 749-1 797. 

3 vols. 1 888-1 891. 
Tyler, Moses Coit. Literary History of the American Revolution, 

2 vols. Vol. II, chap, xxxii. 
Winter, William. The Wallet of Time. 2 vols. 191 3. 

Collections 

Moses, Montrose J. Representative Plays by American Dramatists, 

Vol. I. 1918. Vols. II and III in press. 
Quinn, Arthur H. Representative American Plays. 1917. 

Special Articles 

Gay, F. L. An Early Virginia Play. Nation, Vol. LXXXVIII, p. 136. 

1909. 
Law, Robert A. Early American Prologues and Epilogues. Nation., 
Vol. XCVIII, p. 463. 1914. 



THE EARLY DRAMA 99 

Law, Robert A. Charleston Theaters, 1735-1766. Nation, Vol. XCIX, 
p. 278. 1914. 

Matthews, Albert. Early Plays at Harvard. Nation,\o\. LXXXVIII, 
p. 295. 1909. 

Neidig, W. J. The First Play in America. Nation, Vol. LXXXVIII, 
p. 86. 1909. 

QuiNN, Arthur H. The Early Drama, 1756-1860. Cambridge His- 
tory of American Literature, Vol. I, Bk. II, chap. ii. 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

The best available sources of material are the collection of A. H. 
Quinn, which contains three of the plays mentioned in detail, and the 
first volume of the collection of M. J. Moses, which contains all four, 
and a half dozen more from the early period. 

There is no need of suggesting specific topics in connection with 
the different plays. Each one may be read with reference to its story 
content — the kind of plot, of characters, of scenes, of episodes — or 
with reference to the skill with which it was written — the construc- 
tion, the characterization, the supply of motives for action, the dia- 
logue, the prose or verse style — or with reference to the personality 
of the author and the "signs of the times" — the purpose of the 
play, the moral, intellectual, and aesthetic character and prejudices of 
the author. 

If the student is working toward a report — written or oral — he 
will arrive at a satisfactory result only as he limits himself to one 
very definite subdivision and presents his findings in detail. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 

The first professional man of letters in America, and the 
last of note who was born before the Revolution, was Charles 
Brockden Brown. His short life, from 1771 to 18 10, was 
almost exactly contemporary with the productive middle half 
of Freneau's long career. That he earned his living by his 
pen is a matter of incidental interest in American literary his- 
tory ; the more important facts are that he looms large in the 
chronicles of the American novel and that he was a factor in 
the development of the American periodical. 

He was born in Philadelphia. "His parents," says Dunlap, 
whose whole biography is written with the same labored ele- 
vation, " were virtuous, religious people, and as such held a 
respectable rank in society ; and he could trace back a long 
line of ancestry holding the same honorable station." He was 
a delicate, precocious child, and under the prevalent forcing 
process of the day was cultivated into an infant prodigy. By 
the time that he was sixteen he was well schooled in the 
classics ; he had versified parts of Job, the Psalms, and Ossian ; 
he had sketched plans for three epic poems ; and he had per- 
manently undermined his health. At eighteen he was studying 
law, indulging in debate and in philosophical speculation, and 
was the author of his first published magazine article. In the 
next few years — the dates are not exactly recorded — he aban- 
doned the law; at one time gave thanks that because of his 
feeble health he was free from the ordinary temptations of 
youth, and at another, for the same reason, contemplated 
suicide ; and finally, to escape the urgent counsels of his 
advisers, he left his home city for New York. Here he fell 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN loi 

in with congenial literary companions, joined the Friendly 
Club, in which among other benefits he was the recipient of 
friendly criticism for his " disputatiousness and dogmatism," 
and in the stirring period of the '90' s began to dream Utopian 
dreams of a new heaven on the old earth. 

His active authorship, which began with 1797, was varied 
and incessant. It included between then and 18 10 a large 
number of magazine contributions (many of them serials), six 
novels (all published between 1798 and 1801), several other 
volumes more or less in the nature of hack work, and nine 
years of periodical editorship. He wrote with the confidence 
of youth for a youthful and uncritical reading public, with the 
natural result that his output was more bulky than distinguished. 
He was immensely communicative : filled with " the rapture 
with which he held communion with his own thoughts " — com- 
mitting them to paper in a copious journal, in circumstantial 
letters, and in the rivulet which flowed from his pen into the 
forgotten gulf of magazinedom. In 1799 he was working on 
five different novels, although from April until the end of the 
next year he was editing The Monthly Magazine and Ameri- 
can Review. Before he was thirty his reputation was established 
and his important work was done. In 1801 he returned to 
Philadelphia with achieved success as a reply to the friends 
who had tried to dissuade him from professional writing. 
There he undertook in 1803 another editorial venture in The 
Literary Magazine and American Register. From the excited 
young radical of a half-dozen years earlier, disciple of William 
Godwin, he had become by some reaction a fulfiller of his 
pious ancestry. In his statement of principles he made it clear 
that he would rather be respectable than disturbing in his 
sentiments. He referred to the recent bold attacks on " the 
foundations of religion and morality," declared that he would 
conserve these and proscribe everything that offended against 
them, and concluded (using the editorial third person) : "His 
poetical pieces may be dull, but they at least shall be free from 



102 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

voluptuousness or sensuality ; and his prose, whether seconded 
or not by genius and knowledge, shall scrupulously aim at 
the promotion of public and private virtue." Even under the 
weight of this unmitigated morality the magazine was continued 
for four years. Brown had, however, stepped down from the 
level of an author who was in any degree creative to a plat- 
form for dispensing commonplace conservatism and useful 
knowledge. The decline is further proven by the nature of 
his last industrious ventures : " The American Register, or 
General Repository of History, Politics and Science " (Phila- 
delphia, 1807- 1 8i I, seven vols.) and a prospectus in 1809 
of an unfinished " System of General Geography ; containing 
a Topographical, Statistical and Descriptive Survey of the 
Earth." With the handicap of his early impaired health and 
under the burden of his self-imposed schedule his strength 
failed him, and he died in 18 10, an overworked consumptive. 
It is quite evident, however, that his distinctive work was done. 
If old age had been granted him, unless some amazing reversal 
of form had taken place, it would have been a long, industri- 
ous, and ultraconventional anticlimax to the rather brilliant 
promise of his young manhood. 

In entering the field of fiction-writing Brown took his place 
in the newest literary movement in America. For nearly two 
centuries, as the preceding chapters have shown, poetry and 
expository prose had been the only accepted forms. Some 
years after the beginnings of a native theater in the middle 
of the eighteenth century the first attempts were made in a 
native drama, but they were faint and scant and were looked 
on with indifference, if not with disapproval, by most^of the 
country. The chief tide of composition after the war for 
independence was controlled by the twin moons of Pope and 
Addison. The triumph of the English novel had occurrfed in 
the twenty-five years after the death of Pope, however, and its 
influence could not be long unfelt. In fact the six years of 
controversy which led to the dismissal of Jonathan Edwards 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 103 

from his Northampton church in 1750 (see p. 43) suggest that 
Richardson achieved a furtive reading almost at once ; for 
it was Edwards's protest against certain books which led to 
"lascivious and obscene discourse" among the young people 
that started the whole trouble — and "Pamela" was the 
sensation of the day. A later disapproval of Richardson was 
based merely on his encouragement of frivolity. Says Trumbull 
of Harriet Simper, in "The Progress of Dulness " of 1773: 

Thus Harriet reads, and reading really 
Believes herself a young Pamela, 
The high-wrought whim, the tender strain 
Elate her mind and turn her brain : 
Before her glass, with smiling grace, 
She views the wonders of her face ; 
There stands in admiration moveless,. 
And hopes a Grandison, or Lovelace. 

And by 1804 so strait a conservative as President Dwight of 
Yale could refer with complacency to novelists in general, and 
to Sterne in particular : " Our progress resembled not a little 
that of my Uncle Toby ; for we could hardly be said to 
^dvance at all." 
v The earliest American novels were tentative beginnings of 
several sorts. The first was "The Power of Sympathy," by a 
Lady of Boston (Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton), in 1789. 
It was soon overshadowed by Susanna Rowson's extremely 
popular "Charlotte" in 1790. Both were highly-seasoned 
love stories. Of a different kind was H. H. Brackenridge's 
"Modern Chivalry" (1792- 1793- 1797), a rollicking satire 
on democracy carried on a narrative thread, with about the 
same right to be termed a novel as Pierce Egan's " Life in 
London " of a generation later. Different again was G. Imlay's 
"The Emigrants" (1793), a tale of the West with a conven- 
tional London plot and set of characters. And different again 
was Royail Tyler's " The Algerine Captive " (1797), a contem- 
porary story combining social satire, travel, and international 



I04 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

politics, with significant witness in the preface to the growing 
American vogue of the novel. 

When Brown came to the point of telling his own stories, 
however, he did not follow in the footsteps of any American 
predecessors, but turned to a type for which he was especially 
fitted — the Gothic romance. This was the first extravagant 
contribution of fiction to the Romantic movement, — the tale of 
wonder and horror, of alternating moonlit serenities and mid- 
night storms, of haunted castles and secret chambers, of woods 
and vales and caves and precipices, of apparent supernaturalism 
which was explained away in a conscientious anticlimax, and 
of the same seraphic heroine and diabolical villain who had 
played the leading rdles for Richardson. It had been devel- 
oped by Horace Walpole and Mrs. Anne Radcliffe and " Monk " 
Lewis and finally by William Godwin, who combined all this 
machinery into a kind of literary " tank " for the conveyance 
of a didactic gun crew, for his " Caleb Williams " was in fact 
little more than " Political Justice " in narrative camouflage. 
This was a formula exactly to Brown's taste, since he had both 
a strong ethical bias and a liking for the mysterious. His par- 
ticular undertaking was to translate it into American terms, a 
task that he carried through in his extraordinary output of 
1798 to 1801. 

The first to be published was " Wieland," a gradually 
increasing succession of horrors which are brought about 
through the influence of a mysterious voice. By the oracular 
commands of the unseen speaker Wieland's double tendency 
to superstition and melancholy is deepened into a calm and 
steady fanaticism. At the end, in obedience to what he thinks 
is the voice of God, he murders his wife and children and, 
confessing, is acquitted on grounds of insanity. The horrid 
chapter of mishaps is explained by the repentant villain, 
Carwin, a ventriloquist, who accounts for the stupendous 
wickedness of his achievement by nothing more convincing 
than an irresistible inclination to practice his talent. " Ormond," 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 1 05 

of the next year, is a story of feminine virtue triumphant over 
obstacles, which is compHcated by the employment of two 
heroines, two victimized fathers, and two villains. The ele- 
ment of horror is supplied in the background of the yellow- 
fever plague ; and the mystery, by the apparent omniscience of 
the worse of the malefactors, who is simply an ingenious resorter 
to false doors and secret partitions. 

n7 Brown's most ambitious novel was "Arthur Mervyn," which 
appeared in two volumes in 1799 and 1800. It carries as a 
subtitle "The Memoirs of 1793." These days, according to 
the preface, were suggestive to " the moral observer, to whom 
they have furnished new displays of the influence of human 
passions and motives." He has used " such incidents as 
appeared to him most instructive and remarkable," believing 
that " it is every one's duty to profit by all opportunities of 
inculcating upon mankind the lessons of justice and human- 
ity," He believes in tragic realism on account of the " pity " 
which it may inspire. As a matter of fact the plague seems 
rather incidental than integral to the story. It gives rise to 
the introduction of Arthur Mervyn on the scene and to the 
long piece of retrospective narrative which occupies all of the 
first volume. This tells of the experiences of Arthur, three 
days long, with a consummate villain, Welbeck, just as the sins 
of the latter return to him in a dozen ways. The second 
volume pursues certain . unfinished stories begun in the first, 
the general motives being to show how completely the innocent 
Arthur Mervyn is misunderstood and to present his efforts to 
atone in some degree for the offenses of the real sinner. The 
structure is by no means as firm even as this analysis would 
seem to indicate. It is an endless ramification of stories within 
stories, and stops at last without any sufficient conclusion. 

"Arthur Mervyn " is evidently indebted to William Godwin, of 
whose " transcendent powers " in " Caleb Williams " Brown was 
an ardent admirer. But it is hard for the modern reader to 
see why either book is strikingly individual. Godwin's feelings 



I06 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

about the travesties on justice indulged in by the English courts 
had been anticipated by Smollett in " Roderick Random " 
(chap. Ixi ff.) ; and Caleb's hard times as a fugitive from a false 
charge are very similar to Roderick's. In the light of history 
it seems apparent that Brown was impressed by the book 
because it was widely popular when he was writing, and that 
its popularity was due not so much to its merits as to its polit- 
ical timeliness at a moment of revolutionary excitement. Of 
Brown's three remaining novels only one, '" Edgar Huntly," 
is of any importance. This is a good detective story, fresher 
than any of his others. A somnambulist who murders while 
walking in his sleep supplies the horror and creates the mystery ; 
and certain pictures of frontier life and Allegheny Mountain 
scenery, with an Indian massacre and a panther fight, are 
effectively homemade. 

Brown's novels should naturally be estimated in comparison 
with the works of his contemporaries rather than with the 
crisp and clean-cut narrative of the present, but even so they 
are burdened with very evident defects. The most flagrant of 
these are the natural fruits of hasty writing. He is quoted as 
saying to one of his friends, " Sir, good pens, thick paper, 
and ink well diluted, would facilitate my composition more 
than the prospect of the broadest expanse of clouds, water or 
mountains rising above the clouds." This suggests the steady 
craftsmanship of Anthony Trollope with his thousand words 
an hour. Yet he was in no respect of style or construction 
the equal of Trollope. His novels are full of loose ends and 
inconsequences. He is unblushing in his reliance on ''the 
long arm of coincidence." Even when one untangles the plots 
from the maze of circumstance in which he involves them, 
they are unconvincing because they are so deficient in human 
motive. Moreover, in style they are expressed in language 
which is dizzily exalted even for the formal period in which 
they were written. '" I proceeded to the bath, and filling 
the reservoir with water, speedily dissipated the heat that 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 107 

incommoded me." " I had been a stranger to what is called 
love. From subsequent reflection I have contracted a suspi- 
cion that the sentiment with which I regarded the lady was 
not untinctured from this source and that hence arose the 
turbulence of my feelings." 

As he never wrote — never had time to write — with pains- 
taking care, his best passages are those which he set down 
with passionate rapidity. When the subject in hand rapt him 
clean out of himself so that he became part of the story, he 
could transmit his thrill to the reader. The horrors of a 
plague-stricken city such as he had survived in New York 
made him forget to be " literary." And the tense excitement 
of an actor in moments of suspense he could recreate in 
himself and on paper. His gifts, therefore, were such as to 
strengthen the climaxes of his stories and to emphasize the 
flatness of the long levels between. He had the weakness of 
a dramatist who could write nothing but "big scenes," but his 
big scenes were thrillers of the first magnitude. He was a 
journalist with a ready pen ; his best work was done in the 
mood and manner of a gifted reporter. He had neither the 
constructive imagination nor the scrupulous regard for details 
of the creative artist. 

v.. Although in his Gothic tales Brown was a pioneer among 
American novelists, he was like many another American of 
early days in trailing along after a declining English fashion. 
By 1800 the great day of the Gothic romance was over. 
Within a few years it was to become a literary oddity. Scott 
was to continue in what he called the "" big bow-wow " strain 
but was to make his romances rational and human, and Jane 
Austen was to describe the feelings and characters of ordinary 
life with the hearty contempt for the extravagances of the 
Radcliffe school which she expressed throughout " Northanger 
Abbey " (chaps, i, xx ff.). Yet in his own period Brown was 
recognized in England as well as in America. The best reviews 
took him seriously, Godwin owed a return influence from him, 



lo8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Shelley read him with absorbed attention, Scott borrowed the 
names of two of his characters. In these facts there is evidence 
that he was American not only in his acceptance of foreign 
influence but in his conversion of what he received into a 
product that was truly his own and truly American. There are 
more or less distinct hints of Cooper and Poe and Hawthorne 
in the material and the temper of his writings, and there is 
more than a hint of Mrs. Stowe and Lew Wallace and the 
modern purpose-novelists in the grave intention to inculcate 
" upon mankind the lessons of justice and morality " with 
which he undertook his labors. 



BOOK LIST 
General References 

Cross, W. L. The Development of the English Novel, pp. 98-109. 

1899. 
LosHE, L. D. The Early American Novel. 1907. 

Individual Author 

Charles Brockden Brown. The Novels of, with a Memoir of the 
Author. Boston, 1827; Philadelphia, 1857, 1887. These appeared 
originally as follows : Alcuin, 1 798 ; Wieland, 1 798 ; Ormond, 1 799 ; 
Arthur Mervyn, 1 799-1 800 ; Edgar Huntly, 1 799 ; Clara Howard, 
1 801; Jane Talbot, 1801. 

Bibliography 

Wegelin, O. Early American Fiction, 1774-1830. 1913. See also 
Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 527-529. 

History and Criticism 

DuNLAP, William. Life of Charles Brockden Brown : with selec- 
tions. 1815. 2 vols. 

Erskine, John. Leading American Novelists. 1910. 

HiGGiNSON, T. W. Charles Brockden Brown, in Carlyle's Laugh and 
Other Surprises. 1909. 

Marble, Annie R. Charles Brockden Brown and Pioneers in 
Fiction, in Heralds of American Literature. 1907. 

Prescott, W. H. Life of Charles Brockden Brown, in Sparks's 
Library of American Biography, Vol. I. 1834. Also in Prescott, 
Biographical and Critical Miscellanies. 1845. 

Van Doren, C. Early American Realism. Nation, Nov. 12, 1914. 
(The Source of Wieland.) 



CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN 109 

Van DoREN, C. Minor Tales of Brockden Brown, 1 798-1800. Nation^ 
Jan. 14, 1915. (A detailed study, adding several titles not before 
ascribed to Brown.) 

Van Doren, C. In chap, vi of Cambridge History of American 
Literature, Vol. I, Bk. II. 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read W. L. Cross's " Development of the English Novel " for 
general characterization of the Gothic romance, and for contemporary 
reaction against this type of fiction read Jane Austen's " Northanger 
Abbey," chaps, i, xx ff. 

Brown and his work are so remote from the present that they 
challenge inevitable comparisons with other authors who preceded, 
accompanied, or followed him in literary history. For example : 

Read "Arthur Mervyn," Bk. I, for a comparison in handling 
similar material with Defoe's " Journal of the Plague Year " and 
the entries in Pepys's Diary on the plague of 1666. 

Read "Arthur Mervyn" for a comparison of subject matter, plot, 
and purpose with Godwin's " Caleb Williams." 

Read " Edgar Huntly " for a comparison as a detective story with 
any modem story, as, for example, one of Conan Doyle's. 

Read the great suspense passages in " Wieland " for a comparison 
with similar passages in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. 



CHAPTER IX 

IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 

The turn to Washington Irving and his chief associates in 
New York — James Fenimore Cooper and William CuUen 
Bryant — is a turn from colonial to national America and from 
the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. This is not to say 
that what they wrote was utterly and dramatically different 
from what had been written in the colonial period ; yet there 
are many points of clear distinction to be marked. With them, 
for one thing, New York City first assumed the literary leader- 
ship of the country. It was not a permanent conquest, but it 
was notable as marking the fact that the new country had 
a dominating city. As a rule the intellectual and artistic life 
of a country centers about its capital. Athens, Rome, Paris, 
London, are places through which the voices of Greece, Italy, 
France, and England have uttered their messages. These cities 
have held their preeminence, moreover, because, in addition to 
being the seats of government, they have been the great com- 
mercial centers and usually the great ports of their countries. 
In the United States, then, the final adoption of Washington 
in the District of Columbia as the national capital was a com- 
promise step ; this could not result in bringing to it the addi- 
tional distinction which natural conditions gave to New York. 
Washington has never been more than the city where the 
national business of government is carried on ; locating the 
center for art and literature has been beyond the control of 
legislative action. For the first third of the nineteenth century 
New York was the favored city. Here Irving was born, and 
here Cooper and Bryant came as young men, rather than to 
the Philadelphia of Franklin and his contemporaries. 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL in 

For these men of New York, America was an accomplished 
fact — a nation slowly and awkwardly taking its place among 
the nations of the world. To be sure, the place that Americans 
wanted to take, following the advice of George Washington, 
was one of withdrawal from the turmoil of the Old World 
and of safety from " entangling alliances " which could ever 
again bring it into the warfare from which it was so glad 
to be escaping. The Atlantic was immensely broader in those 
days than now, for its real breadth is to be measured not in 
miles but in the number of days that it takes to cross it. 
When Irving went abroad for the first time in 1803 he was 
fifty-nine days in passage. To-day one can go round the world 
in considerably less time, and the average fast Atlantic steam- 
ship passage is one tenth of that, while the aeroplane flight 
has divided the time by ten again. So the early Americans 
rejoiced in their " magnificent isolation " and wanted to grow 
up as dignified, respected, but very distant neighbors of the 
Old World. 

It was an unhappy fact, however, that America — or the 
United States — was not notable for its dignity in the early 
years of the nineteenth century ; for the finest dignity, like 
charity, " is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly," 
whereas the new nation was very self-conscious, quickly irritated 
at foreign criticism, and uncomfortably aware of its own crudities 
in manner and defects in character. As far as foreign criticism 
was concerned, there were ample reasons for annoyance in 
America. Even as early as 1775 John Trumbull ^ had felt that 
it was hopeless to expect fair treatment at the hands of English 
reviewers, warning his friends Dwight and Barlow, 

Such men to charm could Homer's muse avail, 
Who read to cavil, and who write to rail ; 
When ardent genius pours the bold sublime, 
Carp at the style, or nibble at the rhyme ; 

1 Lines addressed to Messrs. Dwight and Barlow. 



112 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and the mother country, after the Revolution and the War of 
1812, was less inclined than before to deal in compliment. 
Man after man came over, 

Like Fearon, Ashe, and others we could mention ; 
Who paid us friendly visits to abuse 
Our country, and find food for the reviews.^ 

^ Moreover, all the time that England was criticizing her runaway 
child, she was maddeningly complacent as to her own virtues. 
Americans could not strike back with any effect, because they 
could not make the English feel their blows. So they fretted 
and fumed for half a century, their discomfort finding its clearest 
expression in Lowell's lines ^ : 

She is some punkins, thet I wun't deny 

(For ain't she some related to you 'n' I ?) 

But there 's a few small intrists here below 

Outside the counter o' John Bull an' Co, 

An' though they can't conceit how 't should be so, 

I guess the Lord druv down Creation's spiles 

'thout no gret helpin' from the British Isles, 

An' could contrive to keep things pooty stiff 

Ef they withdrawed from business in a miff ; 

I ha'n't no patience with sech swellin' fellers ez 

Think God can't forge 'thout them to blow the bellerses. 

A further reason for uneasiness in the face of foreign com- 
ment was that honest Americans were aware that their country 
suffered from the crudities of youth. It is unpleasant enough 
for " Seventeen " to be nagged by an unsympathetic maiden 
aunt, but it is intolerable if she has some ground for her 
naggings. In small matters as well as great " conscience doth 
make cowards of us all." In a period of such rapid expan- 
sion as prevailed in the young manhood of Irving, Cooper, 
and Bryant it was unavoidable that most of the population were 

1 Fitzgreene Halleck, " Fanny," stanza Iviii. 
'^ Mason and Slidell, 11. 155-165. 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 113 

drawn into business undertakings that were usually eager and 
hurried and that were often slipshod or even shady. The 
American colleges and their graduates were not as distinguished 
as they had been in the earlier colonial days, and the new in- 
fluence of European culture from the Old World universities 
was yet to come. In the cities, and notably in New York, 
the vulgar possessors of mushroom fortunes multiplied rapidly, 
bringing up vapid daughters like Halleck's " Fanny," ^ who in 
all the modern languages was 

Exceedingly well-versed ; and had devoted 
To their attainment, far more time than has, 

By the best teachers, lately been allotted ; 
For she had taken lessons, twice a week, 
For a full month in each ; and she could speak 

French and Italian, equally as well 

As Chinese, Portuguese, or German ; and, 

What is still more surprising, she could spell 
Most of our longest English words off-hand ; 

Was quite familiar in Low Dutch and Spanish, 

And thought of studying modem Greek and Danish ; 

and whose father, a man of newly affected silence that spoke 
"unutterable things," was established in a mortgaged house 
filled with servants and " whatever is necessary for a ' genteel 
liver ' " and buttressed with a coach and half a dozen unpaid- 
for horses. At the same time the countryside was developing 
a native but not altogether admirable Yankee type. At their 
best, Halleck^ wrote, 

The people of today 
Appear good, honest, quiet men enough 
And hospitable too — for ready pay ; 
With manners like their roads, a little rough. 
And hands whose grasp is warm and welcoming, though tough. 

1 " Fanny," stanzas cxxi, cxxii. ^ " Wyoming," stanza iv. 



114 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And at their worst Whittier^ looked back a half century, to 
1818, and recalled them as 

Shrill, querulous women, sour and sullen men. 
Untidy, loveless, old before their time, 
With scarce a human interest save their own 
Monotonous round of small economies, 
Or the poor scandal of the neighborhood ; 

Church-goers, fearful of the unseen Powers, 
But grumbling over pulpit tax and pew-rent. 
Saving, as shrewd economists, their souls 
And winter pork, with the least possible outlay 
Of salt and sanctity ; in daily life 
Showing as litde actual comprehension 
Of Christian charity and love and duty 
As if the Sermon on the Mount had been 
Outdated like a last year's almanac. 

A natural consequence of such criticism from without, and 
such raw and defective culture within the country, was that 
American writers of any moment bided their time as patiently 
as they could, recognizing that for the moment America must 
be a nation of workers who were' 

rearing the pedestal, broad-based and grand. 
Whereon the fair shapes of the Artist shall stand, 

// And creating, through labors undaunted and long, 

The theme for all Sculpture and Painting and Song.^ 
Finally, it is worth noting that the first three eminent writers 
in nineteenth-century America were themselves not university 
products. Bryant withdrew from Williams College at the end 
of the first year, and Cooper from Yale toward the end of the 
second. The real education of these two and of Irving, who 
did not even enter college, was in the world of action rather 
than in the world of books, and their associates were for the 
most part men of affairs. 

1 " Among the Hills " (Prelude, 71 ff.). 2 Lowell, " Fable for Critics." 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 115 

WASHINGTON IRVING 

Many of the facts about the boyhood and youth of Washing- 
ton Irving (178 3-1 8 59) are typical of his place and his period 
as well as true of himself. The first is that he was bom (in 
New York City) of British-American parents, his father a 
Scotch Presbyterian from the Orkney Islands and his mother 
an Englishwoman. His father's rigid religious views dominated 
in the upbringing of himself and his six brothers and sisters. 
Two nearly inevitable results followed : one, that as a boy he 
grew to believe that almost everything that was enjoyable was 
wicked, and the other, that as he came toward manhood he 
was particularly fond of the pleasures of life. A boy of his 
capacities in Boston at this time would have been more than 
likely to go to Harvard College, which was a dominating influ- 
ence in eastern Massachusetts, but King's College (Columbia) 
occupied no such position in New York. Irving's higher edu- 
cation began in a law office, and then, when his health seemed 
to be failing, was continued by travel abroad. The long journey, 
or series of journeys, that he took from 1804 to 1806 were of 
the greatest importance. They were important to Irving be- 
cause he was peculiarly fitted to get the greatest good from 
such informal education. He was an attractive young fellow, so 
that it was easy for him to make and to hold friends ; and he was 
blessed with his father's moral balance, so that he did not fall 
into bad habits. He was so far inclined to laziness that it is 
doubtful if he would have achieved much if he had gone to 
college, but he was wide-awake and receptive, so that he absorbed 
information wherever he went. Furthermore, he had a mind as 
well as a memory, and he came back to America stocked not 
merely with a great lot of miscellaneous facts but with a real 
knowledge of human nature and of human life. 

From the day of his return to New York in 1806 to the day 
of his death, in 1859, Washington Irving had an international 
point of view and developed steadily into an international 



Ii6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

character. His first piece of writing was that of a very young 
man, but a young man of promise. Like the other Americans of 
his day he had read a good deal of English literature written in 
the eighteenth century; and among the essayists of that cen- 
tury who had attracted his attention one was Oliver Goldsmith. 
New York supplied him with his subjects and Goldsmith with 
his method of attack, for he wrote, in company with one of his 
brothers and a mutual friend, a series of amusing criticisms on 
the ways of his townsmen, modeling his Salmagundi Papers 
after Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. This was at once 
independent and imitative. The youthful authors blithely 
announced in their introductory number that they proposed to 
"instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and 
castigate the age." In the twenty-two papers that came out at 
irregular intervals between January, 1807, and January, 1808, 
they criticized everything that struck their attention, and they 
had their eyes wide open. The American love of display, the 
inclination to indulge in fruitless discussion which made the 
country a " logocracy " rather than a democracy, the lack of 
both judgment and order which marked their political elections, 
and their social and literary fashions make just a beginning of 
the list of subjects held up to genial ridicule. Yet, though the 
criticism was fair and to the point, it was an old-fashioned kind 
of comment, the kind that England had been feeding on for 
the better part of a century, ever since Addison and Steele had 
made it popular in the Tatler and the Spectator. Moreover, it 
was done in an old-fashioned way, for in making Mustapha 
Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan, the Tripolitan, the foreign commentator 
on American life as he saw it with a stranger's eyes, they were 
using a device that was old even before it was employed by the 
Englishman from whom they borrowed it. The Salmagundis 
are interesting, however, as early representatives of a longish 
succession of satires on the life of New York, all pleasant and 
rather pleasantly superficial. Three years later Irving, this time 
alone, followed up this initial success with his "Knickerbocker's 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 117 

History of New York," not as serious a piece of work as its 
title at first suggests, for it was a burlesque of a heavy and 
pretentious history on the same subject which had appeared 
just before. Like the Salmagundis it was vivacious and im- 
pertinent, the very clever work of a very young man. 

Now for ten years Washington Irving produced nothing as 
a writer. He was engaged in business with his brothers, and 
proved himself the most level-headed member of a pretty un- 
businessUke combination. In 18 15, in connection with one of 
their many ambitious and unsuccessful schemes, he went abroad, 
probably without the least suspicion that he would be absent 
from his own country for seventeen years and that he would 
return to it as a celebrated writer widely read in two continents. 
The first step toward his wider reputation came in 18 19 with 
the publication in London of ''The Sketch Book," the best 
known of all his works. This was followed in 1822 by "Brace- 
bridge Hall" and in 1824 by "Tales of a Traveller," both similar 
in tone and contents to " The Sketch Book." With a reputa- 
tion as a graceful writer of sketches and stories now thoroughly 
established, he turned to a more substantial and ambitious form 
of work in the composition of "The History of the Life and 
Voyages of Christopher Columbus," living and writing in 
Madrid for the two years before its publication in 1828 ; and 
this book he followed quickly, as in the case of " The Sketch 
Book," with two other productions of the same kind — "The 
Conquest of Granada" in 1829 and "The Voyages and Dis- 
coveries of the Companions of Columbus " in 1831. For three 
years before his return to America, Irving served as Secretary 
of Legation to the court of St. James, London, and then came 
back to enjoy at home a popularity which had been almost 
wholly earned abroad. Out of his career thus far four main facts 
deserve attention. First, that his literary work began with two 
pieces of social satire, written in a boyish, jovial manner which 
he largely abandoned in later years ; second, that his fame was 
established on works of "The Sketch Book" type, made up of 



Ii8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

/ 
short units, gracefully written, and full of quiet humor and 
tender sentiment (now and again he continued in this sort of 
composition up to the end of his life) ; third, that in his maturer 
years he resorted to the writing of formal history, and that he 
followed the first three studies, done in Spain, with " Oliver 
Goldsmith " in 1849, "Mahomet and his Successors " in 1850, 
and "The Life of Washington," completed in 1859, the year 
of his death. To these literary facts should be added a fourth 
which is both literary and political and of no small significance 
in history — the fact of Irving's appointment to a post in the 
foreign diplomatic service. This was to be followed in his own 
life by his four years as Minister to Spain in 1 842-1 846, under 
President Harrison, and in the next fifty years by a distinguished 
list of other appointments to the consular arid diplomatic staffs. 
No single group has done more to bring honor to the United 
States in the courts of Europe during the nineteenth century 
than writers like Irving, Hawthorne, Motley, Howells, Bayard 
Taylor, Lowell, Hay, and their successors down to Thomas 
Nelson Page and Brand Whitlock. 

To return to "The Sketch Book." By 18 18, three years 
after Irving had gone abroad for the second time, the business 
in which he had been engaged with his brothers had utterly 
failed, and he was forced to regard writing not merely as an 
attractive way of diverting himself but as a possible source of 
income. The new articles which he then wrote, together with 
many which had been accumulating in the leisure of his years 
in England, were soon ready for publication, but they found 
no English publisher ready to risk putting them out. Even the 
powerful influence of Sir Walter Scott, Irving's cordial friend, 
could not prevail at first with John Murray, "the prince of pub- 
lishers." In 1 8 19 Sidney Smith's contemptuous and famous 
query, "Who reads an American book .? " was fairly representa- 
tive of the English-reading public. Murray was interested in 
Irving's manuscript, but did not see any prospect of selling 
enough books to justify the risk of publication. Irving had wanted 



i 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 119 

the indorsement of Murray's imprint to offset the severity of the 
kind of EngUsh criticism deplored years earher by John Trum- 
bull (see p. 1 1 1). As soon, however, as the sketches were printed 
in New York in a set of seven modest installments, the atten- 
tion of English readers was attracted to them, and Irving heard 
rumors that a "pirated" English edition was to appear. There 
was no international copyright in those days, and no adequate 
one until as late as 1899 ; so that a book printed on one side 
of the Atlantic was fair game for anyone who chose to steal it 
on the other. If an author wanted his works to appear correctly 
and to get his full money return for them, it was necessary for 
him to go through all the details of publishing independently 
in both countries. After a great deal of difficulty, therefore, 
Irving contrived to get out an English edition through an in- 
efficient publisher, but the success of it was so marked that 
Murray soon saw the light and from then on was eager to get 
the English rights for everything that Irving wrote and to pay 
him in advance five, ten, and, in one case, as much as fifteen 
thousand dollars. 

With the appearance of " The Sketch Book " England 
arrived at a new answer for Sidney Smith's question. Irving 
was sought as a celebrity by the many, in addition to being 
loved as a charming gentleman by his older friends. Few trib- 
utes are more telling than that contained in a letter written many 
years later by Charles Dickens in which he refers to the delight 
he took in Irving's pages when he was " a small and not over 
particularly well taken care of boy." Even the austere Edm- 
burgh Review indorsed the American as a writer of "great 
purity and beauty of diction." From the most feared critic in 
the English-speaking world to the neglected boy whose father 
was in debtors' prison Irving received enough applause quite to 
turn the head of a less modest man. 

" The Sketch Book " includes over thirty papers of four or 
five different kinds. About fifteen are definite observations on 
English life and habits as seen in country towns and on country 



I20 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

estates. Of the remainder six are literary essays of various 
kinds ; four are in the nature of personal traveling reminis- 
cences; three are the famous short stories — "Rip Van Winkle," 
"Sleepy Hollow," and the "The Spectre Bridegroom" ; and 
five so far defy classification as to fall under the convenient 
category of " miscellaneous," 
\/ As a document in literary history the sixth paper deserves 
far more notice than is usually conceded to it, for as a rule 
it is totally neglected. This is entitled " British Writers on 
America." The tone of English literary criticism has already 
been referred to. Irving called attention to the fact that all 
English writings on America and the Americans were equally 
ill-natured. He pointed out that ordinarily English readers de- 
manded strictest accuracy from author-travelers; that if a man 
who wrote a book on the regions of the Upper Nile or the 
unknown islands of the Yellow Sea was caught in error at a 
few minor points, he was held up to scorn as careless and un- 
reliable, and another English traveler who could convict him 
of mistakes or misstatements could completely discredit him. 
But in marked contrast to this, no such scrupulousness was 
demanded of visitors to the United States. Books on the new 
nation in the Western World were written and read to satisfy 
unfriendly prejudice rather than to supply exact information 
and honest opinion. Against a continuation of such a practice 
Irving gave warning, not merely because it was uncharitable 
but because in time it would estrange the two peoples and 
lose for England a friend with whom she could not afford to 
be at loggerheads. 

Is all this to be at end ? Is this golden band of kindred sympathies, 
so rare between nations, to be broken forever ? Perhaps it may be 
for the best. It may dispel an illusion which might have kept us in 
mental vassalage ; which might have interfered occasionally with our 
true interests, and prevented the growth of proper national pride. 
But it is hard to give up the kindred tie ! and there are feelings dearer 
than interest — closer to the heart than pride — that will make us cast 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 1 21 

back a look of regret as we wander farther and farther from the 
paternal roof, and lament the waywardness of the parent that would 
repel the affections of the child. 

There were probably many other Americans capable of mak- 
ing the warning prophecy so notably fulfilled nearly a hundred 
years later, though few, perhaps, who would have put it in such 
temperate language ; but Irving went further in following with 
a warning to his fellow-countrymen : 

Shortsighted and injudicious, however, as the conduct of England 
may be in this system of aspersion, recrimination on our part would 
be equally ill-judged. . . . Let us guard particularly against such a 
temper, for it would double the evil instead of redressing the wrong. 
Nothing is so easy and inviting as the retort of abuse and sarcasm, 
but it is a paltry and unprofitable contest. . . . The members of a 
republic, above all other men, should be candid and dispassionate. They 
are, individually, portions of the sovereign mind and sovereign will, 
and should be enabled to come to all questions of national concern 
with calm and unbiased judgments. . . . Let it be the pride of our 
writers, therefore, discarding all feelings of irritation, and disdaining 
to retaliate the illiberality of British authors, to speak of the English 
nation without prejudice and with determined candor. 

\If there is any justification for calling an American essay 
"The American Declaration of Literary Independence" the title 
should be conferred on this neglected number in "The Sketch 
Book." It was long before either English or American writers 
were wise enough to follow Irving's counsels, but he himself 
was always as tactful as he was honest. 

/ " The Sketch Book " as a whole, then, can best be under- 
stood as an American's comments on English life and custom, 
made at a time when "the retort of abuse and sarcasm " would 
have been quite natural. In the opening paper, as well as in 
the sixth, there is a gentle reminder that the literary east wind 
had felt rather sharp and nipping in New York. Irving is 
describing himself after the fashion of the eighteenth-century 



122 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

essayists at the introduction of a series, and at the end indulges 
in this Httle nudge of irony : 

A great man of Europe, thought I, must ... be as superior to a 
great man of America, as a peak of the Alps to a highland of the 
Hudson ; and in this idea I was confirmed by observing the compara- 
tive importance and swelling magnitude of many English travelers 
among us, who, I was assured, were very little people in their own 
country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the 
gigantic race from which I am degenerated. 

His summarized impressions of the typical Englishman are 
contained in the thirtieth paper, on "John Bull." This keen 
analysis will bear the closest reading and study, and the more 
one knows of English history the more interesting it becomes. 
In this respect it is like " Gulliver's Travels," for it is full of 
double meanings. To the inattentive or the immature it is simply 
a picture of a bluff, hearty, quick-tempered, over-conservative 
average English country gentleman, but to the intelligent and 
attentive reader this gentleman turns out to be the embodiment 
of the English government and the British Empire. The char- 
acter of Parliament, the relation between Church and State, the 
condition of the national treasury, the attitude of the rulers 
toward reform legislation and toward the colonies, dependen- 
cies, and dominions are all treated with kindly humor by the 
visiting critic. The picture is by no means a flattering one, 
but it was Irving's happy gift to be able to indulge in really 
biting satire and yet to do so in such a courteous and friendly 
way that his words carried little sting. Part of the concluding 
paragraph to this essay will illustrate his method of combining 
justice with mercy : 

Though there may be something rather whimsical in all this, yet 
I confess I cannot look upon John's situation without strong feelings 
of interest. With all his odd humors and obstinate prejudices, he is 
a sterling-hearted old blade. He may not be so wonderfully fine 
a fellow as he thinks himself, but he is at least twice as good as his 
neighbors represent him. His virtues are all his own; all plain, 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 123 

home-bred, and unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness 
of his good qualities. His extravagance savors of his generosity ; his 
quarrelsomeness of his courage ; his credulity of his open faith ; his 
vanity of his pride ; and his bluntness of his sincerity. They are 
all the redundancies of a rich and liberal character. 

In this spirit Irving wrote the other sketches of John Bull 
as he appears in "Rural Life," "The Country Church," 
'^The Inn Kitchen," and the group of five Christmas pictures. 

To judge from these eight scenes of English country life, 
Irving, a visitor from a new and unsettled land, was chiefly 
fascinated by the evidences of old age and tradition on every 
side. For this reason, if for no other, he delighted in the 
customs of the country squires who had not been swept out 
of their ancient order by the tide of modern trade. Even the 
English scenery was in his mind " associated with ideas of 
order, of. quiet, of sober, well-established principles, of hoary 
usage and reverend custom. Everything seems to be the 
growth of ages of regular and peaceful existence." As Irving 
observed it, it was still the " Merrie England " of song and 
story, an England, therefore, beautifully typified in the cele- 
bration of the Christmas festivities. There is a touch of auto- 
biography in his comment on the good cheer that prevailed 
at Bracebridge Hall, — a home that Squire Bracebridge tried to 
make his children feel was the happiest place in the world, — 
it was so utterly different from the suppressed family circle 
over which his Presbyterian father had ruled. As a guest he 
enjoyed all the picturesque and quaint merrymaking at the 
Hall, and re-conjured up pictures like those which Addison 
had previously drawn at Sir Roger de Coverley's. Yet all the 
while he was aware that the old English gentleman was a 
costly luxury for England to maintain, that Squire Bracebridge 
was after all nothing but John Bull, and that John Bull was 
inclining to lag behind his age. As a student of Goldsmith, 
Irving had read " The Deserted Village " ; the thought of it 
seems to have come back to him while writing " Rural Life " ; 



124 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

for a moment the usurpation of the land by the wealthy dis- 
quieted him, but then he consoled himself witn the comforting 
thought that abuses of this sort were " but casual outbreaks 
in the general system." Irving was writing as an observer 
who found much to admire in the external beauty of the 
old order of things, but at the bottom of his American mind 
it is quite apparent that there was a silent approval of gradual 
reform in " the good old ways." Squire Bracebridge was 
delightful to Irving, but on the whole he was a delightful 
old fogy. 

Irving's papers on London — "The Boar's Head Tavern," 
"Westminster Abbey," and "Little Britain" — are full of a 
similar reverence for old age in the life of the community. In 
the same mood in which he laughed at the pranks of the 
Christmas Lord of Misrule, he made his way to Eastcheap, 
"that ancient region of wit and wassail, where the very names 
of the streets relished of good cheer, as Pudding Lane bears 
testimony even at the present day " ; and he took much more 
evident satisfaction in his recollection of Shakespearean revelries 
than in his hours in Westminster, the " mingled picture of 
glory and decay." Once again in " Little Britain " Irving was 
in more congenial surroundings, for he preferred to smile at 
the echoes of dead laughter than to shudder at the reminders 
of vanished greatness. 

Little Britain may truly be called the heart's core of the city ; the 
strong-hold of true John Bullism. It is a fragment of London as it 
was in its better days, with its antiquated folks and fashions. Here 
flourish in great preservation many of the holiday games and customs 
of yore. The inhabitants most religiously eat pancakes on Shrove 
• Tuesday, hot-cross-buns on Good Friday, and roast goose at Michael- 
mas ; they send love-letters on Valentine's Day, burn the Pope on the 
fifth of November, and kiss all the girls under the mistletoe at 
Christmas. Roast beef and plum-pudding are also held in superstitious 
veneration, and port and sherry maintain their grounds as the only 
true English wines. 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 125 

In more than casual respect for such traditions Irving goes 
on to introduce the rival oracles of Little Britain, to escort us 
to Wagstaff' s and the Roaring Lads, to act as personal con- 
ductor to Bartholomew Fairs and a Lord Mayor's Day, and 
finally to lament the baleful influence of the socially ambitious 
Misses Lamb and the decline of the choice old games All- 
Fours, Pope Joan, and Tom-come-tickle-me. It is no wonder 
that the youthful Dickens loved these papers, for the same 
England appealed to both Irving and Dickens throughout 
their lives. It was a rough, boisterous, jolly England, with a 
good deal of vulgarity which they were ready to forgive and 
a good many vices which they chose to overlook in favor of 
its chief virtues — a blunt honesty, a hearty laugh, and a 
full stomach. 

There is another side of old England that was dear to those 
two — that John Bull could "easily be moved to a sudden 
tear " (see p. 109, first topic). In the old days of even a hun- 
dred years ago men of Saxon stock were much more ready 
to express themselves than they are to-day, for the accepted 
manners of the present are comparatively reserved and impas- 
sive. If a man was amused he laughed loud and long ; if he 
was angered he came up with '" a word and a blow " ; and if 
his deeper feelings were touched he was not ashamed of a 
tear. In fact he seemed almost to feel a certain pride in his 
"sensibility," as if his power to weep proved that his nature 
was not destitute of finer feeling and made up for his quick- 
ness to wrath and his fondness for a broad joke. In perhaps 
unconscious recognition of this habit of mind the literature of 
a century ago contained a great many frank appeals to the 
reader's feeling for pathos, appeals which the modern reader 
would be likely to condemn as unworthily sentimental. 

In the history of literature a distinction is made between 
" sentiment " — the ability to respond to the finer emotions, 
such as love, sorrow, reverence, patriotism, worship — and 
" sentimentalism " — - the unrestricted expression of these 



126 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

emotions by eloquence, tears, and feminine sighs, blushes, and 
swoonings. For this sentimentalism, which was a literary 
fashion of his period, Irving found an outlet in sketches like 
"The Wife," "The Broken Heart," "The Widow and her 
Son," and "The Pride of the Village." The first is on "the 
fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming 
reverses of fortune," a sketch in which the husband is the 
sentimentalist. He has lost his money and is afraid to shock 
his wife with the revelation, but his " altered looks and stifled 
sighs " half betray him. In "an agony of tears " he tells a 
friend, and by him is persuaded to be honest with her. Her 
latent heroism comes out in the face of his announcement; and 
on her welcome to him at his first homecoming to the modest 
cottage he is rendered speechless, and tears once more gush 
into his eyes. The second is a direct attempt to shame " those 
who have outlived the susceptibility of early feeling, or have 
been brought up ... to laugh at all love stories." The third, 
on " The Widow and her Son," is more convincing to the 
reader of to-day, for it is on the tragic picture of a fond parent's 
bereavement. The fourth is the best example of all. The 
pride of the village is introduced as " blushing and smiling in 
all the beautiful confusion of girlish diffidence and delight." 
She falls in love with a gallant young soldier, who begs her to 
accompany him when he is ordered to the front. Shocked at 
his perfidy she clasps her hands in agony, then succumbs to 
"faintings and hysterics," and then goes into a decline. After 
some time her lover returns to her and rushes into the house. 
"She was too faint to rise — she attempted to extend her 
trembling hand — her lips moved as if she spoke, but no word 
was articulated — she looked down upon him with a smile of 
unutterable tenderness — and closed her eyes forever ! " If 
these sketches seem unreal and even amusing to the student, 
it is partly because they are actually overdrawn and partly 
because the present generation has repressed, if it has not 
" outlived, the susceptibility of early feeling." 



i/: 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 127 



Two other types of work remain to be mentioned. The first 
is the literary essay, in which the chief interest arises from 
Irving's sympathetic appreciation of his Enghsh masters. From 
these essays — there are five of distinct importance — it appears 
that he was especially well-read in the writings of a much 
earlier period and that he took pleasure in dwelling on pas- 
sages which were characterized, as his own work came to be, 
by " great purity and beauty of diction." The other group is 
the most famous in "The Sketch Book," the three stories 
of which " Rip Van Winkle " is the best known. This is 
extremely interesting for several reasons. The first is that 
it is a good story, which will long be read for its own sake, 
and as such it needs no comment, for it is familiar to every- 
one. But it is also a milestone in literary history. One 
reason for this is that it carries into practice a principle that 
American authors had long been talking and writing about 
— the principle of using native material. It is located in the 
Catskill Mountains and in the years before and after the 
Revolutionary War. It introduces real colonial and early 
American people. Although it is a far-fetched romance in its 
theme, it makes use of homely, realistic details. Jonathan 
Doolittle's hotel was just the sort of shabby boarding house 
that marred the countryside during the slipshod years after 
the Revolution and that survived into Irving's youth. "A 
large rickety wooden building . . . with great gaping windows, 
some of them broken and mended with old hats and petti- 
coats." The sign was strangely changed from pre-Revolution 
days. " The red coat was changed for one of blue and buff, 
a sword was held in the hand instead of a sceptre, the head 
was decorated with a cocked hat, and underneath was painted 
in large characters, GENERAL WASHINGTON." The fact that 
the folk story about Hendrick Hudson and his crew had some 
basis in a German superstition does not affect the fact that 
Irving completely localized it and gave it its enduring fame 
as an American tale. 



128 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Another reason why this story stands out in Hterary history 
is that it is one of the first really successful examples of the 
modern short story, and that in this sense it represents 
America's chief contribution to the types of literature. We 
are likely to take for granted that all the popular forms of 
literature have existed feince the beginning of time. Yet prose 
stories of any kind were comparatively modern a hundred 
years ago, and most of them were long narratives in two or 
three and sometimes as many as six or seven volumes. What 
short stories existed were merely condensed novels, not limited 
to any brief period and not developed with any definite detail. 
" Rip Van Winkle " was strikingly different from its vague and 
shapeless forerunners. After the introduction it was limited 
to two short passages of time — the few hours just before and 
the few hours just after Rip went to sleep on the mountain. 
And the whole story was composed to lead up to the main 
point, -Vthe chief point of this history and of all history, — 
the relentless way in which life moves on, regardless of the 
individual who falls asleep and is left behind. All the details 
in the story help to develop this idea. Rip, the ne'er-do-well, 
was the sort of man to serve as the central character, for he 
was more anxious to escape life than to take his part in it. 
His eager, querulous, sharp-tongued wife reminded him of the 
burden of living only to make him avoid it the more ; her loss 
was the only one which he did not regret on his return. His 
dog and gun, which he missed first and missed most keenly, 
were the pride of the old-fashioned trapper out of place in the 
up-to-date American village. The years bridging the Revolution 
were the most natural and effective ones to mark the kind of 
change that is always taking place; and Rip's experience in 
finding that loyalty to a discarded monarchy was treason to 
a new republic was simply an emphatic illustration of what 
will usually happen to a man who lives in the past instead 
of in the present. It is not at all necessary to assume that 
Irving chose the old folk-legend in order to expound this 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 129 

theme, or even that he was conscious of the completeness with 
which he was doing it. The fact remains that it was remark- 
able in its day for its clear compactness, and that it meets 
one of the tests of enduring fiction in telling a good story 
well and of building that story out of elements that convey 
some truth about life. 

" The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " is comparable to " Rip 
Van Winkle " only in its use of native American character, 
scenes, and tradition. It is hardly a short story at all, but 
rather a prolonged sketch full of "local atmosphere" and 
partly strung on a narrative thread. Ichabod Crane and his 
townsmen, except for Brom Bones and his gang, are like 
Rip in one respect, for they are representative citizens in a 
town where " population, manners and customs remain fixed ; 
while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which 
is making such incessant changes in other parts of this 
restless country, sweeps by them unobserved." Ichabod was 
an interesting survival, too, because his combination of learn- 
ing and superstition had come to him from a distinguished 
source, for he " was a perfect master of Cotton Mather's 
history of New England witchcraft, in which, by the way, he 
most firmly and potently believed. He was, in fact, an odd 
mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appe- 
tite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were 
equally extraordinary, and both had been increased by his 
residence in this spellbound region. No tale was too -gross 
or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his 
delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to 
stretch himself on the rich bed of clover, bordering the little 
brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over 
old Mather's direful tales, until the gathering dusk of the 
evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes." 
Ichabod, moreover, is a comic type in American life in the 
early nineteenth century, who seems to have been equally 
disliked by all the New Yorkers — the Puritan descendant 



I30 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

strayed from home. Cooper's David Gamut is one of the same 
crop. The story of the Headless Horseman, Hke that of the 
Spectre Bridegroom, is, of course, only a make-believe ghost 
story, neither important nor well told. The real interest in 
the sketch lies in its picture of simple country life. The whole 
scene at Baltus Van Tassel's house is as clear and vivid as the 
contrasting scenes at Bracebridge Hall or as Whittier's picture 
of another family scene in " Snow-Bound. " The third well- 
known story in "The Sketch Book," "The Spectre Bride- 
groom," is, like " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," more of a 
sketch than a story, and does not pretend to be laid on 
American soil. 

It is a common experience of schoolboys and schoolgirls to 
feel on reading Irving for the first time that his way of writing 
is stiff and unnatural. Compared with the fashion of to-day 
the wording and sentence structure of " The Sketch Book " 
deserve such a verdict. But to render it against the writing of 
a hundred years ago, without comparing the book in question 
with others of its own generation, is to ignore the very point 
of "Rip Van Winkle" — that fashions change. Assuming, 
then, that styles do change, and that Irving was no more formal 
than other authors of his day, it is still worth while to see what 
some of the main points of contrast are between 1819 and 
19 1 9. Here are two passages that will serve as a basis for 
comparison. The first is from " Philip of Pokanoket," one 
of the' two " Sketch Book " essays written in America. 

It is to be regretted that those early writers, who treated of the 
discovery and settlement of America, have not given us more particular 
and candid accounts of the remarkable characters that flourished in 
savage life. The scanty anecdotes which have reached us are full of 
peculiarity and interest; they furnish us with nearer glimpses of 
human nature, and show what man is in a comparatively primitive 
state, and what he owes to civilization. There is something of the 
charm of discovery in lighting upon these wild and unexplored 
tracts of human nature ; in witnessing, as it were, the native growth 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 131 

of moral sentiment, and perceiving those generous and romantic 
qualities which have been artificially cultivated by society, vegetating 
in spontaneous hardihood and rude magnificence. 

The second is from G. S. Lee's "Crowds," Bk. I, chap, viii : 

The future in America cannot be pictured. The only place it can 
be seen is in people's faces. Go out into the street, in New York, in 
Chicago, in San Francisco, in Seattle ; look eagerly as you go into the 
faces of the men who pass, and you feel hundreds of years — the next 
hundred years — like a breath swept past. America, with all its forty- 
story buildings, its little play Niagaras, its great dumb Rockies, is the un- 
seen country. It can only as yet be seen in people's eyes. Some days, 
flowing sublime and silent through our noisy streets, and through 
the vast panorama of our towers, I have heard the footfalls of the 
unborn, like sunshine around me. 

These passages have almost exactly the same number of words, 
— the former one hundred and fifteen and the latter one hun- 
dred and seventeen, — but a glance at the printed page shows 
that Irving's words take up one fifth more space than Lee's do. 
The reason is that Irving uses twenty-six words of more than 
two syllables, and Lee, aside from place-names, only two. 
Although both passages are written in analysis of American 
conditions, Irving, who is discussing the past, employs abstract 
or general words — to use the nouns alone, words like discovery, 
anecdotes, peculiarity, civilization, sentiment, qualities, mag- 
nificence ; Lee, who is looking to the future, uses definite and 
picturesque terms like faces, street, buildings, eyes, panorama, 
towers, footfalls, — uses these words even though he admits 
the idea he is dealing with cannot be pictured. Again, Irving 
cast his one hundred and fifteen words into three sentences 
averaging nearly forty words in length, and Lee put his into 
six, averaging, a fraction less than twenty. Finally, all Irving's 
sentences are " loose," or so built that the reader may rest or even 
stop with a completed sense before he comes to the end ; but four 
out of six in Lee's passage are "periodic," or so constructed 
that you must read to the end or be left hanging in mid-air. 



132 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

It would, of course, be forcing the issue absurdly far to in- 
sist or even suggest that so broad a comparison would apply 
without exception to the writers of a hundred years ago and 
of to-day, but in general there is a fair deduction to be drawn. 
Irving belonged to a group who were still addressing an 
eighteenth-century audience, an audience made up of " gentle 
readers " — men who enjoyed the rhythmical flow of a courtly 
and elegant style, who felt that there was a virtue in purity and 
beauty of diction apart from any idea the diction was supposed 
to express ; but the modern reader esteems literature as a means 
rather than an end. It must catch and hold his attention ; it 
must be clear and forcible first, and elegant as a secondary 
matter ; and its words and sentences must be chosen and put 
together as a challenge to a reader in the midst of a restless, 
driving, twentieth-century world. With these facts in mind 
one may say, if he will, that Washington Irving was stiff and 
formal, but he should say this as marking a difference and not 
a necessary inferiority in Irving. 

Irving lived until 1859, but the richly fruitful part of his 
life was from 18 19, the year in which the serial publication of 
"The Sketch Book" began, to 1832, the year of his return 
from abroad. In this period he published ten books and all 
the best known of his works but the lives of Goldsmith and 
Washington. When he came back after seventeen years' absence 
he was known and admired in England, France, and Germany, 
and the most popular of American authors. Irving was one of 
the first to profit, American fashion, by a European reputation 
reflected and redoubled at home. At the dinner of welcome 
tendered him soon after his arrival he showed how absence 
had made the heart grow fonder : 

I come from gloomier climes to one of brilliant sunshine and 
inspiring purity. I come from countries lowering with doubt and 
danger, where the rich man trembles and the poor man frowns — 
where all repine at the present and dread the future. I come from 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 133 

these to a country where all is life and animation ; where I hear on 
every side the sound of exultation ; where everyone speaks of the 
past with triumph, the present with delight, the future with growing 
and confident anticipation. 

And here, he went on to say, he proposed to remain as long 
as he lived. These last twenty-seven years were filled with 
honors. He had already received the gold medal from the 
Royal Society of Literature and the degree of Doctor of Laws 
from Oxford University. Now he was to have the refusal of 
a whole succession of public offices and the leadership of a 
whole " school " of writers. Diedrich Knickerbocker had be- 
come a household word, which was applied to the Knickerbocker 
school of Irving's followers and used in the christening of the 
Knickerbocker Magazine (183 3-1 865), Irving was in truth a 
connecting link between the century of his birth and the century 
of his achievements. He carried over the spirit and the man- 
ners of Addison and Goldsmith into the New World and into 
the age of steam. With him it was a natural mode of thought 
and way of expression, but with his imitators it was affected 
and superficial — so much so that the Knickerbocker school 
declined and the Knickerbocker Magazine went out of existence 
shortly after Irving's death. 

The leading figure in the Knickerbocker school was Fitz- 
Greene Halleck, who was born in Connecticut in 1790 but 
spent his active life in New York. When he came up to the 
city, at the age of twenty-one, he fell in with the literary people 
of the town and shared their eager interest in the current Eng- 
lish output. According to his biographer they were absorbed 
in "The Lady of the Lake" and "Marmion," in Campbell's 
" Pleasures of Hope," Rogers's " Pleasures of Memory," Moore's 
" Melodies," Miss Porter's " Scottish Chiefs " and " Thaddeus 
of Warsaw," and, a little later, in " Waverley," "' Guy Manner- 
ing," and " The Antiquary " — works that in Halleck's opinion 



134 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

produced "a wide-spread enthusiasm throughout Great Britain 
and this country which has probably never been equalled in the 
history of literature." 

Halleck (as already cited on page 113) was uncomfortably 
conscious of the prosaic commercial drive of American life 
and disposed to lament the wane of romance. His regret for 
the passage of " the good old days " he frequently expressed 
in the poems he wrote between the ages of twenty-five and 
thirty — "Alnwick Castle," "Red-Jacket," "A Sketch," "A 
Poet's Daughter " ; and in " Wyoming " he sometimes grieved 
for the old and sometimes protested at the new. When in 1823 
he wrote " Marco Bozzaris," he lived up to his own thesis, 
taking an heroic episode of immediate interest — August 20, 
1823 — and putting it into a ballad for freedom that has 
probably been declaimed as often as " The Charge of the 
Light Brigade " or " How They Brought the Good News from 
Ghent to Aix." 

In the meanwhile he had become the intimate of the talented 
young Joseph Rodman Drake. Their friendship had sprung 
from a common love of romantic poetry, but the joint work 
which they undertook was a series of contemporary satires. 
These were printed in The National Advocate and the New 
York Evening Post between March and July, 18 19. Thirty-five 
of them appeared over the signature of " Croaker," from which 
they became known as the " Croaker Papers." They were 
both pertinent and impertinent, aided by the mystery of their 
authorship and accumulating in interest through the uncer- 
tainty as to when the next would appear and whom it would 
assail. The more general in theme had the same underlying 
good sense which belonged to the earlier Salmagundis (see 
p. 116), and in their simple and often brutal directness they 
must have offered then, as they do now, a relief from the 
fashionable echoes of secondary English poets. Later in 18 19 
Halleck resumed the same strain in "Fanny" — the account 
in about a thousand lines of the rise and fall of Fanny and her 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 135 

father in New York finance and society.^ Among many efforts 
of the sort Stedman's " Diamond Wedding " and Butler's 
" Nothing to Wear " have been the only later approach, and 
all have been true not merely of New York but of the same 
stage in most quick-growing American cities. 

In 1820 Drake died at the age of twenty-five, leaving 
as his literary bequest the inspiration for Halleck's memorial 
verses, 

Green be the turf above thee 
Friend of my better days I 

as well as his share in the " Croaker Papers," and " The 
Culprit Fay," and certain shorter poems which give promise of 
things much greater than this overrated attempt. The " Fay," 
according to a letter by Halleck, was a three-day production of 
1 8 16, written to demonstrate that the Hudson River scenery 
could be turned to literary account. Whether or no the anec- 
dote is true, Drake wrote to this point in his " To a Friend," 
and in " Niagara " and " Bronx." Yet the fact is worth remark 
that nothing in " The Culprit Fay " is any more explicitly true 
of the Hudson region than of the Rhine country or the Nor- 
wegian fiords. The poem reads like a pure fantasy, hurriedly 
and carelessly written by an inexperienced hand. Nevertheless, 
when published it was extravagantly praised. Halleck said, " It 
is certainly the best thing of the kind in the English language, 
and is more strikingly original than I had supposed it was 
possible for a modern poem to be."^ 

1 An interesting tribute is paid this poem by Ezra Pound in a footnote to 
" L'Homme Moyen Sensuel," in " Pavannes and Divisions," p. 33. " I would 
give these rhymes now with dedication ' To the Anonymous Compatriot 
Who Produced the Poem " Fanny " Somewhere About 1820,' if this form of 
centennial homage be permitted me. It was no small thing to have written, 
in America, at that distant date, a poem of over forty pages which one can 
still read without labor." 

2 It was reserved for Poe to write a genuinely critical estimate of it. See 
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II, pp. 326 ff. Reprinted in "The 
Literati," p. 374. 



136 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In Halleck's exclamatory surprise at originality in any modern 
poem is to be found the vital difference between the two friends. 
Halleck seemed to believe that the final canons for art had been 
fixed, and could hardly conceive of originality in a nineteenth- 
century poet ; but Drake tried new things and rebelled at the 
old. His best efforts, however qualified their success, were 
strainings at the leash of eighteenth-century convention. 

Go ! kneel a worshipper at nature's shrine ! 

For you her fields are green, and fair her skies I 

For you her rivers flow, her hills arise ! 

And will you scorn them all, to pour forth tame 

And heartless lays of feigned or fancied sighs ? 

And will you cloud the muse ? nor blush for shame 

To cast away renown, and hide your head from fame ? 

As " The Culprit Fay " shows, Drake's idea was to escape from 
the drawing-room into the open, but when in the open to weave, 
as it were. Gobelin tapestries for drawing-room use. He saw 
no gleam of essential poetry in democracy or the crowded town, 
yet in his vague craving for something better than Georgian 
iterations he showed that the revival of individualism was at 
work in him. The story is told that his intimacy with Halleck 
began in his accord with the latter's wish that he could " lounge 
upon the rainbow, and read ' Tom Campbell.' " In his aspirations 
he seems to have been nearer to the spirit of Keats and Shelley. 

As fate would have it, the more independent of the two was 
taken off before his prime, and Halleck, the survivor, settled 
down into complacent Knickerbockerism. With his nicety of 
taste, his keen eye, his fund of humor, and his frankness, he 
was an established literary and social favorite. He was the kind 
of handsome and courtly gentleman of the old school, as Irving 
was also, who became a friend and associate of the leading 
financier of the day. There was nothing restless or disconcerting 
about him. He was a critic of manners, but not of the social 
order. He probably knew little of Emerson, and he certainly 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 137 

disapproved of Whitman, In 1848, when less than sixty years 
of age, he went back to his native town in Connecticut and 
lived there till after the Civil War, totally unaffected as a man 
of letters, except as the conflict seems to have silenced him. 
But he was not alone, for when he sank into eclipse all the 
Knickerbockers disappeared with him. Their vogue was over. 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Authors 

Washington Irving. First posthumous complete edition. New York, 
1 860-1 86 1. 21 vols. These appeared originally as follows: Salma- 
gundi, 1807-1808; History of New York, i8og; The Sketch Book, 
1 819; Bracebridge Hall, 1822; Jonathan Oldstyle, 1824; Tales of 
a Traveller, 1824; Columbus, 1828; Conquest of Granada, 1829; 
Companions of Columbus, 1831; TheAlhambra, 1832; The Crayon 
Miscellany, 1835; Astoria, 1836; Captain Bonneville, 1837; Gold- 
smith, 1849; Mahomet, 1839-1850; Wolfert's Roost, 1855; Wash- 
ington, 1855-1859; Uncollected Miscellanies, 1866. 

Bibliography • 

Compiled by Shirley V. Long for Cambridge History of American 
Literature, Vol. I, pp. 510-517. 

Biography ana Criticism 

The standard life of Washington Irving is by P. M. Irving, The Life 

and Letters of Washington Irving. 1862-1864. 1864, 1879, 1883. 

4 vols. 
BoYNTON, H. W. Washington Irving. Boston, 1901. 
Bryant, W. C. A Discourse on the Life, Character, and Genius of 

Washington Irving, i860. 
Curtis, G. W. Irving's Knickerbocker. Crzh'c, Vol. III. 1883. 
Curtis, G. W. Washington Irving, in Literary and Social Essays. 

1894. 
Hazlitt, William. Elia, and Geoffrey Crayon, in The Spirit of the 

Age. 1825. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Irving's Power of Idealization. Critic, 

Vol. III. 1883. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Tribute to Irving. Mass. Hist. Sac. 

Proceedings. 1858-1860. 
Howells, William Dean. My Literary Passions. 1895. 
Longfellow, H. W. Tribute.to Irving. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings. 

I 858-1 860. 
Lowell, J. R. A Fable for Critics. i»48. 
Payne, W. M. Leading American Essayists. 1910. 



138 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

POE, E. A. living's Astoria. Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. III. 

1837- 
Putnam, G. H. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, 

Bk. II, chap. iv. 
Thackeray, W. M. Nil Nisi Bonum. Comhill Magazine, Vol. I. 

i860. Harper' s,No\.^^. i860. 
Warner, C. D. American Men of Letters Series. 1881. 
Warner, C. D. Irving's Humor. Critic, Vol. III. 1883. 
Warner, C. D. Washington Irving. Atlantic, Vol. XLV. 1880. 
Warner, C. D. The Work of Washington Irving. 1893. 

Fitz-Greene Halleck, The Poetical Works of. New York, 1847, 
1850, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1858, 1859. Poetical writings with 
extracts from those of Joseph Rodman Drake. J. G. Wilson, editor. 
1869, 1885. (These editions include the Croaker Papers.) These 
appeared originally as follows: Fanny, 181 9; Alnwick Castle with 
Other Poems, 1827; Fanny and Other Poems, 1839; Young 
America, a Poem, 1865; Lines to the Recorder, 1866. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck. 
J. G. Wilson. 1869. 

Bryant, W. C. Some Notices on the Life and Writings of Fitz- 
Greene Halleck. 1869. 

Dennett, J. R. The Knickerbocker School. Nation, Dec. 6, 1867. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. Fitz-Greene Halleck, in Putnarn's Magazine. 1868. 

Leonard, W. E. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, 
Bk. II, in chap. v. 

Poe, E. a. Fitz-Greene Halleck, in Complete Works, Vol. VIII. 1902. 

TucKERMAN, H. T. Reminiscences of Fitz-Greene Halleck, in 
Lippincotf s Magazine. 1868. 

Wilson, J. G. Bryant and his Friends. 1886. 
Collections 

Boynton, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 147-168, 626-629. 

DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 
Vol. II, pp. 207-212. 

Griswold, R. W. Poets and Poetry of America. 1842. 

Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. V, 
pp. 216-225. 

Joseph Rodman Drake. Poems by Croaker, Croaker and Co., and 
Croaker, Jr. First printed in the New York Evening Post. 18x9. 
Reprinted as a pamphlet, 181 9. The Culprit Fay and Other Poems. 
1835. The American Flag. 1861. 
Biography and Criticism 

Corning, A. L. Joseph Rodman Drake. Bookman. 1915. 

Howe, M. A. DeW. American Bookmen. 1898. 



IRVING AND THE KNICKERBOCKER SCHOOL 139 

PoE, E. A. Fancy and Imagination. Complete Works, Vol. VII. 1902. 

Wells, J. L. Joseph Rodman Drake Park. 1904. 

Wilson, J. G. Bryant and his Friends. 1886. 

Wilson, J. G. Joseph Rodman Drake, in Harper's Magazine. June, 

1874. 
Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 136-153, 624-626. 
DuYCKiNCK, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopedia of American Literature, 

Vol. I, pp. 201-207. 
Griswold, R. W. Poets and Poetry of America. 1842. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. V, 

PP- 363-379- 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the " Salmagundi Papers " and " The Citizen of the World " 
for evident influences. Close attention will reveal obligations not 
merely in the use of a foreign observer, a slight narrative thread, 
and the kind of topics treated, but also in actual detail passages. 

Read passages covering the education of Goldsmith in Irving's Life, 
in Macaulay's essay, and in Thackeray's " English Humourists," and 
compare the degrees of sympathy with which Goldsmith is presented. 

In connection with the problems of international copyright, see 
passages indicated in the table of contents or index of the following 
volumes : " Matthew Carey, Publisher," by E, L. Bradsher ; " Letters 
of Richard Watson Gilder" (edited by Rosamond Gilder, 19 16); 
"These Many Years," by Brander Matthews, 19 17; "Memories 
of a Publisher " and " The Question of Copyright," by George Haven 
Putnam, 1915 ; "Mark Twain, a Biography," by A. B. Paine, 1912. 

Read " John Bull " in " The Sketch Book " for the passages in 
specific reference to the English government. 

Read " Rural Life " in "The Sketch Book" for a further obligation 
to Goldsmith — the influence of " The Deserted Village." 

Read " Bracebridge Hall" for a further development of English life 
and character begun in the " Sketch Book" essays discussed in the text. 

Read "The Alhambra" for a comparison in subject matter, method, 
and tone with the three stories in " The Sketch Book." 

Pick out the five essays in literary criticism in "The Sketch Book" 
for the light they throw on Irving's literary likings and critical acumen. 



140 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Read in " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " the description of the 
domestic group at the Van Tassels for comparison with similar 
pictures in the English sketches. 

Compare the " Croaker Papers " with the " Salmagundi Papers." 

Read Halleck's " Fanny " (see Boynton, " American Poetry," 
pp. 154-158) for comparison in method with the " Croaker Papers." 

Read Joseph Rodman Drake's " To a Friend " for an appeal 
for originality characteristic of the period and then read " The 
Culprit Fay " ("American Poetry," pp. 136-146) for a nonfulfillment 
of the authors' own appeal. 



CHAPTER X 

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

Cooper's life (1789-185 1) was inclosed by Irving's, for he 
was born six years later and died eight years earlier. When he 
was a little more than a year old his father took his large family 
— Cooper was the eleventh of twelve children — to the shore 
of Otsego Lake, New York, where he had bought a tract, after 
the Revolution. It was uncleared country, but here Judge 
Cooper laid out what developed into Cooperstown, established 
a big estate, and built a pretentious house. His scheme of life 
was aristocratic, more like that of the first Virginia settlers 
than like that of the Massachusetts Puritans. Here the boy grew 
up in an ambitious home, but among primitive frontier sur- 
roundings, until he needed better schooling than Cooperstown 
could offer. To prepare for Yale College he was sent to Albany 
and put in charge of the rector of St. Peter's Church. Under 
this gentleman he gained not only the "book learning" for 
which he went but also a further sense of the gentry's point 
of view — a point of view which throughout his life made him 
frankly critical of the defects in America even while he was 
passionately loyal to it. At thirteen he was admitted to Yale. 
This sounds as if he were a precocious child, but there was 
nothing unusual in the performance, for the colleges were 
hardly more than advanced academies where most of the stu- 
dents received their degrees well before they were twenty. This 
was the institution which John Trumbull — who had passed his 
examinations at seven! — had held up to scorn in his ''Progress 
of Dulness," and where his hero, Tom Brainless, 

Four years at college dozed away 

In sleep, and slothfulness and play, 

141 



142 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

but even from here Cooper's unstudious and disorderly ways 
caused his dismissal in his second year. His formal education 
was now ended, and in his development as a writer it was 
doubtless much less important than his earlier years in the 
wilderness west of the Hudson River or those that were to 
follow on the ocean. In 1806 he was sent to sea for a year 
on a merchant vessel, and on his return was commissioned a 
midshipman in the United States Navy. His service lasted 
for three years, from January i, 1808, to May, 181 1, and was 
ended by his marriage to the daughter of a Tory who had 
fought on the British side in the Revolutionary War. Then 
for nine years he settled down to what seemed like respectable 
obscurity, living part of the time at his father-in-law's home, 
part of the time at Cooperstown, and the last three years at 
Scarsdale, New York. 

From these first thirty years of his life there seemed to be 
little prospect that he was to become a novelist of world-wide 
and permanent reputation. There is no record that anyone, 
even himself, expected him to be a writer. Yet it is quite 
evident, as one looks back over it, that his preparation had 
been rich and varied. He had lived on land and on sea, in 
city and country, in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. 
He had breathed in the stories of the Revolutionary days, 
grown up on the frontier, and been a part of America in the 
making. And from his father, his tutor, and his wife and her 
family, as well as from his travel, he had learned to see 
America through critical eyes. He had the material to write 
with and the experience to make him use it wisely. The one 
apparently missing factor was the most important of all — 
there was not the slightest indication that he had either the 
will or the power to use his pen. 

The story of how he began to write is a familiar one. Out 
of patience with the crudity of an English society novel that 
he had been reading, he said boastfully that he could write a 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 143 

better one himself. Many another novel-reader and playgoer 
has talked with equal recklessness after a literary disappoint- 
ment in the library or the theater, but the remarkable part of 
the story is that in 1820 Cooper made his boast good. The 
resultant novel, " Precaution," was successful in only one 
respect — that it started Cooper on his career. It was a color- 
less tale with an English plot, located in English scenes of 
which he had no first-hand knowledge. It made so little 
impression on public or publishers that when his next novel 
was ready, in 1821, he had to issue it at his own expense; 
and he made this next venture, "The Spy," in part at least 
because of his friends' comment — characteristic of that self- 
conscious period — that he would have been more patriotic 
to write on an American theme. To let Cooper tell his 
own story : 

The writer, while he knew how much of what he had done was 
purely accidental, felt the reproach to be one that, in a measure, 
was just. As the only atonement in his power, he determined to 
inflict a second book, whose subject should admit no cavil, not only 
on the world, but on himself. He chose patriotism for his theme ; 
and to those who read this introduction and the book itself, it is 
scarcely necessary to add that he [selected his hero] as the best 
illustration of his subject. 

By means of this story of war times, involving the amazing 
adventures of Harvey Birch, the spy, Cooper won his public ; 
a fact which is amply proven by the sale of 3500 copies of 
his third novel, " The Pioneer," on the morning of publication. 
This story came nearer home to him, for the scenery and 
the people were those among whom he had lived as a boy at 
Cooperstown. Working with this familiar material, based on 
the country and the developing life which was a part of his 
very self. Cooper wrote the first of his famous " Leatherstock- 
ing" series. The five stories, taken together, complete -the 
long epic of the American Indian to which Longfellow was later 



I 



144 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to supply the earlier cantos in " Hiawatha." For Cooper took up 
the chronicle where Longfellow was to drop it (see p. 276) : 

Then a darker, drearier vision 
Passed before me, vague and cloud-like ; 
I beheld our nation scattered, 
All forgetful of my counsels, 
Weakened, warring with each other : 
Saw the remnants of our people 
Sweeping westward, wild and woful, 
Like the cloud-rack of a tempest, 
Like the withered leaves of Autumn. 

It was not a deliberate undertaking, planned from start to 
finish ; it was not written in the order in which the stories 
occurred — like the long series by Winston Churchill ; it did 
not even conceive of the scout as the central character of 
the first book, much less of the four which were to follow it. 
Cooper did not even seem to appreciate after he had written 
" The Pioneer " how rich a vein he had struck, for within the 
next two years he wrote " The Pilot " a sea story, and " Lionel 
Lincoln, or the Leaguers of Boston," supposed to be the first 
of a series of thirteen colonial stories which were never carried 
beyond this point. However, in 1826 he came back to Leather- 
stocking in " The Last of the Mohicans," second both in 
authorship and in order of reading, and in 1827 he wrote ''The 
Prairie," the last days of the scout. It was not till 1840 and 
1 84 1 that he completed the series with the first and third num- 
bers, "The Deerslayer" and "The Pathfinder." To summarize: 
the stories deal in succession with Deerslayer, a young woods-\ 
man in the middle of the eighteenth century ; then Hawkeye, '/ 
the hero of "The Last of the Mohicans," a story of the French 
and Indian War ; next. Pathfinder ; fourth, Leatherstocking, ^ 
the hero of "The Pioneer," in the decade just before 1800; 
and finally, with the trapper, who in 1 803 left the farming lands 
of New York to go westward with the emigrants who were 
attracted by the new government lands of " The Prairie." 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 145 

With the writing of the second of the series, Cooper con- 
cluded the opening period in his authorship. In a Httle over 
six years he had published six novels and had shown promise 
of all that he was to accomplish in later life. He had attempted 
four kinds : stories of frontier life, in which he was always 
successful ; sea tales, for which he was peculiarly fitted ; his- 
torical novels, which he did indifferently well ; and studies in 
social life, in which he had started his career with a failure 
but to which he returned again and again like a moth to 
the flame. 

To '" The Last of the Mohicans " the verdict of time has 
awarded first place in the long roster of his works. It is the 
one book written by Cooper that is devoted most completely 
to the vanishing race. Three passages set and hold the key 
to the story. The first is from the author's introduction : "Of 
all the tribes named in these pages, there exist only a few 
half-civilized beings of the Oneidas on the reservation of their 
people in New York. The rest have disappeared, either from 
the regions in which their fathers dwelt, or altogether from 
the earth." The second is a speech from Chingachgook to 
Hawkeye in the third chapter, where they are first introduced : 
"Where are the blossoms of these summers? — fallen, one by 
one : so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the 
land of the spirits. I am on the hilltop, and must go down 
into the valley ; and when Uncas follows in my footsteps, there 
will no longer be any of the blood of the Sagamores, for my 
boy is the last of the Mohicans," The third is the last 
speech of the book, by the sage Tamenund : " It is enough," 
he said. "Go, children of the Lenape, the anger of the Manitou 
is not done. Why should Tamenund stay ? The pale-faces are 
masters of the earth, and the time of the red-men has not yet 
come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw 
the sons of Unamis happy and strong ; and yet, before the 
night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the 
wise race of the Mohicans," 



146 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

For many years it was a habit of critics to scoff at Cooper's 
Indian characters as romantic and idealized portraits of the red 
man. This judgment may have arisen during the period of 
Cooper's great unpopularity, when nothing was too unfair to 
please the American public ; but, once said, it persisted and 
was quoted from decade to decade by people who cannot have 
read his books with any attention. It was insisted that the 
woodcraft with which Cooper endowed the Indians was beyond 
possibility, yet later naturalists have recorded time and again 
marvels quite as incredible as any in Cooper's pages. It was 
reiterated that their dignity, self-control, tribal loyalty, and 
reverence for age were overdrawn, yet many another authority 
has testified to the existence of these virtues. And, finally, 
it was charged that they were never such a heroic and supe- 
rior people as Cooper made them, though study of his por- 
traits will show that Cooper did not make them half as 
admirable as he is said to have done. Tamenund is simply a 
mouthpiece ; Uncas and Chingachgook are the only living 
Indian characters whom he makes at all admirable, but he 
acknowledges the differences between their standards and the 
white man's in the murder and scalping of the French sentinel 
after he had been passed in safety: "'T would have been a 
cruel and inhuman act for a white-skin ; but 't is the gift and 
hatur' of an Indian, and I suppose it should not be denied." 
All the other Indians, beneath their formal ways in family, camp, 
and council. Cooper presents as treacherous and bloodthirsty 
at bottom, a savage people who show their real natures in the 
Massacre of Fort William Henry, the chief historical event in 
the book. On this ground he partly explains and partly justi- 
fies the conquest of the red men by the white. 

The other people of the story are types who appear in all 
Cooper's novels. Most important is the unschooled American : 

He has drawn you one character, though, that is new, 
One wildflower he 's plucked that is wet with the dew 
Of this fresh Western world. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 147 

He is an out-of-door creature, intolerant of town life, skep- 
tical of any book but the book of nature, a lover of the woods 
and mountains, and a worshiper of the God who made them. 
He has no " theory of life " or of government or of America, 
but he is just as truly a product of American conditions as 
the mountain laurel or the goldenrod. Natty Bumppo, central 
figure of the " Leatherstocking " series, is blood brother to 
Harvey Birch in "The Spy," to Long Tom Coffin in "The 
Pilot," to Captain Truck in " Homeward Bound " and " Home 
as Found," and to a similiar man in almost every one of the 
other stories. Quite in contrast to this "wildflower" is a 
potted plant, of whom Cooper is almost equally fond. This is 
the polished gentleman of the world, such as Montcalm, who 
embodies the culture and manners that the New World needed. 
Cooper admired such a man almost to the point of infatuation, 
but presented him very badly ; he made an idea of him rather 
than a living character, a veneer of manners without any 
solid backing, superficial, complacent, and hollow. One feels 
no affection for him and very little respect. He annoys one 
by so evidently thanking God that he is not as other men. 
Another type is the pedant David Gamut, a man who is 
made grotesque by his fondness for his own narrow specialty. 
David, a teacher of psalm-singing, bores the other characters 
by continually "talking shop," and breaks into melody in and 
out of season, capping the climax by chanting so vociferously 
during the massacre that the Indians regard him as a harmless 
lunatic and spare him then and thereafter. Dr. Sitgreaves of 
"The Spy," and Owen Bat, the doctor of "The Prairie," 
are struck from the same die. Finally, among the leading 
types, must be mentioned the "females." 

The use of this word, which sounds odd and uncouth to-day, 
was general a hundred years ago, when " lady " was reserved 
to indicate a class distinction, and " woman " had not become 
the common noun ; but the change is not merely one of name, 
for the women of books and the women of life were far less 



148 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

self-reliant than the women of the twentieth century. Then they 
were frankly regarded not only as dependents but as inferiors. 
A striking evidence of this can be found in the appropriate 
pages in Bartlett's " Familiar Quotations." The majority of 
the quoted passages are culled from poets who wrote before 
the rise of the woman's movement, and the tone of the 
passages taken as a whole is distinctly supercilious and con- 
descending. "Women are lovely at their best," the poets 
seemed to agree, " but after all, they are merely — women. And 
at less than their best, the least said about them the better." 
Cooper was by no means behind his time in his attitude ; 
indeed, he was, if anything, rather ahead of it. His feeling for 
them seems to have been that expressed in the famous passage 
from " Marmion " of which the first half is usually all that 

is quoted : 

O woman ! in our hours of ease 
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, 

When pain and anguish wring the brow, 
A ministering angel thou ! 

In the ordinary situations in Cooper's novels his " females " 
were things to patronize and flatter, — for flattery never goes 
unattended by her sardonic companion, — but in times of 
Stress they showed heroic powers of endurance. The three 
introduced in the first chapter of " The Spy " were endowed, 
according to the text, with " softness and affability," " internal 
innocence and peace," and expressed themselves by blushes 
and timid glances. The two "lovely beings" of "The Last 
of the Mohicans" are even more fulsomely described. "The 
flush which still lingered above the pines in the western sky 
was not more bright nor delicate than the bloom " on Alice's 
cheeks ; and Cora was the fortunate possessor of " a counte- 
nance that was exquisitely regular and dignified, and sur- 
passingly beautiful." In the passage that follows they are not 
referred to simply, but always with a bow and a smile — " the 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 149 

reluctant fair one," "the dark-eyed Cora," and as they finally 
disappear on horseback through the woods, the reader is expected 
not to laugh at the final ridiculous tableau of '" the light and 
graceful forms of the females waving among the trees." Of 
course the readers to whom Cooper addressed this did not 
laugh. They realized that in speaking of women he was simply 
using the conventional language of the day, which was not 
intended to mean what it said ; that he was introducing a pair 
of normal, lovely girls, and that the best to be required of a 
normal girl was that she should be lovely — "only this and 
nothing more." There was no evidence that Cora and Alice 
had minds ; they were not expected to ; instead they had warm 
hearts and "female beauty." Lowell was probably not unfair 
in his comment : 

And the women he draws from one model don't vary. 
All sappy as maples and flat as a prairie. 

But it must be admitted that in Cooper's time the model 
was a prevailing one, and that it was only in his old age that 
women began in any large numbers to depart from it. 

Cooper was all his life a more and more conscious observer 
and critic of American character and American conditions. 
As a result his stories take hold of the reader for the very 
simple reason that they are based on actual life and real 
people. They had, moreover, and still have, the added 
advantage that they are based on a life that was fascinatingly 
unfamiliar to the great majority of his readers, and so, though 
realistic in their details, they exert the appeal of distant 
romance. All through the eighteenth century, and particularly 
through the last third of it, literature had been inclining to 
dwell on the joys of life in field and forest. Addison and his 
followers had handed on the spell of the old ballads of primi- 
tive adventure. Pope had dabbled with the " poor Indian " 
and Goldsmith had written his celebrated line about " Niagara's 
, . . thundering sound," Collins and Gray had harked back 



150 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to the romantic past, and Burns and Wordsworth had confined 
their poems to the peasantry' among whom they lived, Irving's 
reply to "English Writers on America" (see p. 120) alluded 
to the frequency of books on distant lands and peoples. So 
when Cooper began publishing his stories of adventure in un- 
trodden lands, he found an attentive public not only in America 
but in England, and not only in England but all over Europe, 
where, as soon as his novels appeared, they were reprinted in 
thirty-four different places. 

With the literary asset of this invaluable material Cooper 
combined his ability to tell an exciting story. There is nothing 
intricate or skillful about his plots as pieces of composition. 
In fact they seldom if ever come up to any striking finish. 
They do not so much conclude as die, and as a rule they 
" die hard." They are made up of strings of exciting adven- 
tures, in which characters whom the reader likes are put into 
danger and then rescued from it. "The Last of the Mohicans" 
has its best material for a conclusion in the middle of the 
book, with the thrilling restoration of Alice and Cora to their 
father's arms at Fort William Henry ; but the story is only 
half long enough at that point, so the author separated them 
again by means of the massacre and carried it on more and 
more slowly to the required length and the deaths of Cora 
and the last of the Mohicans. For " The Spy," the last 
chapter was actually written, printed, and put into page form 
some weeks before the latter part had even been planned. 
Cooper's devices for starting and ending the exciting scenes 
seem often commonplace, partly because so many later writers 
have imitated him in using them. Mark Twain, in " Fenimore 
Cooper's Literary Offenses," said derisively that the " Leather- 
stocking Tales" might well have been named "The Broken 
Twig " series, because villain and hero so often discover each 
other as the result of a misstep on a snapping branch. He 
might have substituted "A Shot Rang Out" as his title, on 
account of the frequency with which episodes are thus started 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 151 

Of finished. Bret Harte's burlesque in his " Condensed Novels" 
shows how broadly Cooper laid his methods open to attack 
from the scoffers. Yet the fact remains that few who have 
come to scoff could have remained to rival Cooper. He has 
enlisted millions of readers in dozens of languages; he has 
fascinated them by the doings of woodsmen who were as 
mysteriously skillful as the town-bred Sherlock Holmes ; 
he has thrilled by the genuine excitement of deadly struggles 
and hairbreadth 'scapes ; and the sale of his books, a hundred 
years after he first addressed the public, would gladden the 
heart of many a modern novelist. 

As a chapter in the literary history of America there is 
another side of Cooper's career which is intensely interesting. 
It has already been mentioned that he did not abandon the 
writing of novels on social life with the unsuccessful " Precau- 
tion." Lowell refers to this fact in the " Fable for Critics " : 

There is one thing in Cooper I like, too, and that is 

That on manners he lectures his countrymen gratis : 

Not precisely so either, because, for a rarity. 

He is paid for his tickets in unpopularity. 

Now he may overcharge his American pictures, 

But you '11 grant there 's a good deal of truth in his strictures ; 

And I honor the man who is willing to sink 

Half his present repute for the freedom to think, 

And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, 

Will risk t'other half for the freedom to speak. 

Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, 

Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. 

In 1826 Cooper went abroad with his family, staying on the 
other side for nearly six and a half years. His reputation was 
well established, and he left with the best wishes of his country- 
men and the respect of the many foreigners who knew him 
through his books. He was an ardent believer in his own 
land and in the theory of its government, and at the same 
time he was an admirer, as he had been taught to be, of the 



152 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

dignity and the traditions of the Old World. It was to ht 
expected that he would grow wiser with travel and that his 
later works, while retaining all their interest as stories, would 
be enriched by a deeper and mellower feeling for humankind. 
But he had already displayed one weakness which was destined 
to increase in him until it almost wholly offset his virtues with 
his readers. He was positive to the last degree in the opinions 
he held, and brutally untactful in expressing them. If he had 
ever heard of the soft answer that turneth away wrath, he felt 
contempt for it. Thus, for example, in the preface to " The 
Pioneer " he referred to the least of authors' ills, the con- 
tradiction among critics: "There I am, left like an ass between 
two locks of hay ; so that I have determined to relinquish 
my animate nature, and remain stationary, like a lock of hay 
between two asses." The fruit of travel was naturally a more 
vivid sense of the differences between American and European 
ways, a fertile crop of opinions, a belligerent assertion of them, 
and an unhappy series of quarrels with all sorts of Americans — 
business men, editors, naval officers, congressmen, and the 
majority of his readers, a vast army of representatives of 
the upper ten thousand and the lower. 

During the first three years abroad he went on, under the 
headway gained at home, with three novels of American 
themes — one in the " Leatherstocking " series, one on Puritan 
life in New England, and one sea story. Then he went off 
on a side issue and sacrificed the next ten years to contro- 
versial books which are very interesting side lights on literary 
history but very defective novels. The whole sequence started 
with Cooper's resentment at the " certain condescension in 
foreigners " which was to make Lowell smart nearly forty 
years later. To meet this, and particularly the condescension 
of the English, he left the field of fiction to write " Notions 
of the Americans ; Picked up by a Traveling Bachelor." 
It failed of its purpose because it was too complacent about 
America and now and then too offensive about England, 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 153 

but. the underlying trouble with it was its aggressive tone. 
A man could hardly make friends for America when he was 
in the temper to write of Englishmen, " We have good reason 
to believe, there exists a certain querulous class of readers 
who consider even the most delicate and reserved commenda- 
tions of this western world as so much praise unreasonably 
and dishonestly abstracted from themselves." Cooper never 
could refrain from "the retort of abuse" against which Irving 
had advised in '' The Sketch Book." Then followed three 
novels located in Venice, Germany, and Switzerland, — " The 
Bravo," "The Headsman," and "The Heidenmauer," — all 
designed to show how charming was Old World tradition and 
how mistaken was its undemocratic scheme of life. They were 
failures, like " Precaution," because Cooper could not write an 
effective novel which attempted to prove anything. It was his 
gift to tell a good story well and to build it out of the 
material in the midst of which he had grown up. 

By the time he was ready to come back to America he had 
become kinked and querulous. The story of his controversies 
is too long for detailing in this chapter. The chief literary 
result of it is the pair of stories " Homeward Bound " and 
" Home as Found." The point of them, for they again were 
written to prove something, was to expose the crudities of a 
commercialized America. There is no question that the coun- 
try was crude and raw (see pp. 111-114). A period of such 
rapid development was bound to produce for the time poor 
architecture, bad manners, shifty business, superficial learning, 
and questionable politics. Many other critics, home and foreign, 
were telling the truth about America to its great discomfort. 
Cooper's picture of Aristabulus Bragg was probably not unfair 
to hundreds of his contemporaries : 

This man is an epitome of all that is good and all that is bad, in a 
very large class of his fellow citizens. He is quick-witted, prompt in 
action, enterprising in all things in which he has nothing to lose, but 
waiy and cautious in all things in which he has a real stake, and ready 



154 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to turn not only his hand, but his heart and his principles, to anything 
that offers an advantage. With him, literally, " Nothing is too high to 
be aspired to, nothing too low to be done." He will run for governor 
or for town clerk, just as opportunities occur, is expert in all the prac- 
tices of his profession, has had a quarter's dancing, with three years 
in the classics, and turned his attention toward medicine and divinity, 
before he finally settled down to law. Such a compound of shrewd- 
ness, impudence, common-sense, pretension, humility, cleverness, 
vulgarity, kind-heartedness, duplicity, selfishness, law-honesty, moral 
fraud, and mother wit, mixed up with a smattering of learning and 
much penetration in practical things, can hardly be described, as any 
one of his prominent qualities is certain to be met by another quite 
as obvious that is almost its converse. Mr. Bragg, in short, is purely 
a creature of circumstances. 

The weakness of Cooper's criticisms on America is not that 
they were unjust, but that they were so evidently ill-tempered 
and bad-mannered. He made the utter mistake of locating the 
returning Europeans, the accusers of America, in Templeton 
Hall, which was the name of his own country place. He 
involved them in his own quarrel with the villagers over the 
use of a picnic ground belonging to him, and thus loaded on 
himself all the priggishness which he ascribed to them. The 
public was only too ready to take it as a personal utterance 
when he made one of them say : 

I should prefer the cold, dogged domination of English law, with 
its fruits, the heartlessness of a sophistication without parallel, to being 
trampled on by every arrant blackguard that may happen to traverse 
this valley in his wanderings after dollars. 

It is a misfortune that most men and women who are willing 
to risk repute for the freedom to think and speak are eccentric 
in other respects. They are unusual first of all in having minds 
so independent that they presume to disagree with the majority 
even in silence. They are more unusual still in having the 
courage to disagree aloud. When they have said their say, 
however, their neighbors begin to carp at them, respectable 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 155 

people to pass by on the other side, and the newspapers to dis- 
tort what they have said and then abuse them for what they 
never uttered. The honest and truly reckless talkers, stung to 
the quick, feel injured and innocent, talk extravagantly, rely 
more and more on their own judgments and less and less on 
the facts, and sooner or later lose their influence, if they do not 
become outcasts. In the end they have the courage and honesty 
with which they started, a few deploring friends, and a thou- 
sand enemies who hate them with an honest and totally 
unjustified hatred. It is a tragic round which all but the most 
extraordinary of free speakers seem doomed to travel. And 
Cooper did not escape it. Yet he did have the remarkable 
strength and good fortune to pass out of this vale of con- 
troversy toward the end of his life. With 1842 his campaign 
against the public ceased — and theirs against him. He spent 
his last years happily at Cooperstown and slowly returned into 
an era of good feeling. It was in these later years that Lowell 
paid him the well-deserved tribute quoted above. He was 
really a great patriot. If his love of America led him into this 
sea of troubles, it was the same love that made him the suc- 
cessful writer of a masterly series of American stories. It is 
the native character of the man that is worth remembering, 
and the native quality of his books that earned him a wide 
and lasting fame. 

BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

James Fenimore Cooper. Collected Works. New York. 1854. 
33 vols. These have appeared in many later collected and individual 
editions in America, England, and many other lands and languages. 
The chief works appeared originally as follows: Precaution, 1820; 
The Spy, 1821 ; The Pioneers, 1823; The Pilot, 1823; Lionel 
Lincoln, 1825; The Last of the Mohicans, 1826; The Prairie, 
1827; The Red Rover, 1828 ; Notions of the Americans, 1828 ; The 
Wept of Wish -ton- Wish, 1829; The Water- Witch, 1 83 1 ; The Bravo, 
183 1 ; The Heidenmauer, 1832; The Headsman, 1833; The Moni- 
kins, 1835; Homeward Bound, 1838; Home as Found, 1838; The 



156 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Pathfinder, 1840 ; Mercedes of Castile, 1840 ; The Deerslayer, 1841 ; 
The Two Admirals, 1842; Wing and Wing, 1842; Wyandotte, 
1 843 ; Ned Myers, 1 843 ; Afloat and Ashore, 1 844 ; Satanstoe, 1 845 ; 
The Chain Bearer, 1845; The Redskins, 1846; The Crater, 1847; 
Jack Tier, 1848; The Oak Openings, 1848; The Sea Lions, 
1849; The Ways of the Hour, 1850. 
Bibliographies 

Good bibliographies in Lounsbury's Life (see below), and Cambridge 
History of American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 532-534. 
Biography and Criticism 

There is no official biography, Cooper having opposed such a 
publication. The best single volume is by T. R. Lounsbury 
{A.M.L. Series). 
Brownell, W. C. Cooper. Scribner^s Magazine, April, 1906. Also 

in American Prose Masters. 1909. 
Bryant, W. C. A Discourse on the Life and Genius of James 

Fenimore Cooper. 1852. 
Clemens, S. L. (Mark Twain). Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses. 
North American Review, July, 1895. ^^^o in How to tell a Story 
and Other Essays. 1897. 
Erskine, John. Leading American Novelists. 1910. 
HiLLARD, G. S. Fenimore Cooper. Atlantic Monthly, January, 1862. 
Howe, M. A. DeW. James Fenimore Cooper. The Bookman, March, 

1897. Also m. American Bookmen. 1898. 
HowELLS, W. D. Heroines of Fiction. 1901. 
Matthews, B. Fenimore Cooper. Atlantic Monthly, September, 

1907. Also in Gateways to Literature. 191 2. 
Phillips, Mary E. James Fenimore Cooper. 1913. 
SIMMS, W. C. The Writings of J. Fenimore Cooper. Views and 

Reviews. 1845. Ser. i. 
Stedman, E. C. Poe, Cooper, and the Hall of Fame. North American 

Review, August, 1907. 
Tuckerman, H. T. James Fenimore Cooper. North American 

Review, October, 1859. 
Van Doren, Carl. Cambridge History of American Literature. 

Vol. I, Bk. II, in chap. vi. 
Vincent, L. H. American Literary Masters. 1906. 
Wilson, J. G. Cooper Memorials and Memories. The Independent, 
January 31, 1901. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read Brownell's defense of Cooper's Indian characters in his 
" Masters of American Prose " and check his statements by your 
own observations in a selected novel. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 157 

Read the comments of Brownell in "American Prose Masters," 
and of Lounsbury in the A. M. L. Series, on Cooper's women, and then 
arrive at your own conclusions from the reading of a selected novel. 

If you have read two or three of Cooper's novels, see if he has 
introduced his usual polished gentleman and his bore or pedant in 
each, and see how nearly these characters correspond in themselves 
and in their story value. 

Make a study of the actual plot and its development in any selected 
novel of Cooper's. 

Read Mark Twain's essay on " Fenimore Cooper's Literary 
Offenses " and decide on how far it is fair and how far it was 
dictated by Mark Twain's hostility to romantic fiction. 

Read Cooper's prefaces to a half-dozen or more novels for the 
light they will throw on his belligerency of temper. 

Read " Home as Found " for comparison of the topics treated 
with those in the " Salmagundi" and "Croaker" papers, for obser- 
vation on the variety of American weaknesses presented, for a 
decision as to how fundamental or how superficial these weaknesses 
were, and for a conclusion as to the amount of evident ill temper 
in the book. 



CHAPTER XI 

WILLIAM CULLEK BRYANT 

The mention of Irving, Cooper, and Bryant as representa- 
tives of New York in the early nineteenth century is likely 
to mislead students into thinking of them as literary associates. 
As a matter of fact they seem not to have had any more con- 
tact than any other three educated residents of the city. They 
were not unsociable men, but each went his own social way. 
Until his period of controversy Cooper was leading member 
of a literary club of which he had been the founder. Irving, 
without going to the pains of organizing a group, was the 
natural center of one which delighted in his company and 
emulated his ways of thinking and writing. Bryant, instead 
of being drawn after either of these older men, stepped into 
journalism, becoming a friend of the great editors and the 
political leaders. Irving was the only one of the three who 
was bom and bred in town. Cooper and Bryant were not 
sons of New York ; they were among the first of its long list 
of eminent adopted children. 

Bryant (i 794-1 878) was born at Cummington, Massachu- 
setts. His descent can be traced to the earliest Plymouth 
families, and, on his mother's side, to Priscilla Alden. His 
father was a much-loved country doctor, the third of the 
family in recent generations to follow this budding profession. 
He was a man of dignities in his town, a state representative 
and senator, and a welcome friend of the Boston book-lovers. 
His services were so freely given, however, that he had little 
money to spend on his boy's education. This was carried on, 
according to a common custom, under charge of clergymen, 
though not the least important teaching came direct from the 
158 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 159 

father's guidance of his reading and criticism of his writing, 
Bryant's talents began to show promise while he was still 
a boy, for he read eagerly, and in his early 'teens wrote a 
number of "pieces " which were more or less widely circulated 
in print. One of these, " The Embargo," a political satire 
addressed to President Jefferson, ran to two editions and 
roused so much doubt as to its authorship that his father's 
friends soberly certified to it as the work of a boy of thirteen. 
In these years Bryant made Alexander Pope his adored model, 
and for so young an imitator he succeeded remarkably well. 
A little later he fell under the influence of a group of minor 
Englishmen who have rather wickedly been nicknamed the 
" Graveyard Poets " because of the persistency with which 
they versified on death, the grave, and the after-life. " Thana- 
topsis," written before he was eighteen, was a reflection of 
and a response to certain lines of Kirke White, who had deeply 
stirred his imagination. 

Once again it was hard to persuade the literary world that 
young Bryant was the actual author. " Thanatopsis " and the 
" Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood " were published 
in the North American Review without signature, according 
to the usual custom. The editors had requested contributions 
from the elder Bryant, and he had found these verses unfinished 
at home and had sent them on after copying them in his own 
handwriting. The more famous poem so impressed the editors 
that, far from believing it the work of an American boy, 
Richard H. Dana, on hearing it read aloud, said to his 
colleague, " Ah, Phillips, you have been imposed upon ; no 
one on this side the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses." 
In the meantime Bryant had been admitted at fifteen to the 
sophomore class at Williams College, had withdrawn at the end 
of a year intending to enter Yale the next autumn, had been 
unable to carry out the plan through lack of funds, and 
had studied law and been admitted to the bar. While still in 
doubt as to his choice of profession he had written the " Lines 



l6o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to a Waterfowl," which were later published in the North 
Americati, following the acceptance of " Thanatopsis." He 
became a lawyer not through any love of the profession but 
because it seemed a reasonable way to earn a living in a period 
when one could not hope for support from his pen. He 
practiced for nine years, never with any real enthusiasm, 
describing himself in the midst of these years as 

forced to drudge for the dregs of men, 
And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen, 
And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud. 

His discontent was increased by the applause which came 
with his magazine poems and by the compliment of an 
invitation to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard 
in 1 82 1. Finally, in 1825, he went down to New York in the 
hope of making a success of a new periodical there. In spite of 
his associate editorship The New York Review and Athenceum 
Magazine was as shortlived as scores of others. It was a bad 
time in America for such a venture. The country was flooded 
with English publications and American pirated editions of 
English works. The public was not educated to the idea of 
magazines, nor the publishers to the methods of financing 
them. They were unattractive in form and as heavy in contents 
as the labored name of Bryant's ill-fated experiment. After 
the collapse he returned for a short time to the practice of 
law, but in 1826 he accepted the assistant editorship of the 
New York Evening Post, three years later became editor, and 
continued with it until his death in 1878. He was the first 
nineteenth-century man of letters to enter the field of American 
journalism, and he played a highly distinguished part in 
its history. 

When Bryant became editor in chief of the New York 
Evening Post he was thirty-five years old. He had written 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT i6l 

about one third of the poetry saved in the collected editions 
and about one half of the better-known poems on which his 
reputation rests. This much is worth considering by itself, 
because it has a character of its own and is quite different 
from the output of the latter fifty years. In the first place it 
was consciously religious in tone. Bryant came from Puritan 
ancestry. He was brought up to believe in a stern God whO' 
had doomed all mankind to eternal destruction and who ruled 
them relentlessly, sometimes in sorrow but more often in anger. 
To the Puritans life on earth was a prelude to eternity, and 
eternity was to be spent possibly in bliss, but probably in 
torment. They were truly a people "whose minds had derived 
a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior 
beings and eternal interests." His mind and imagination were 
therefore wide open to the influence of Kirke White and the 
other " Graveyard Poets." " Thanatopsis," or " a glimpse of 
death," was composed under the eye of God as Bryant knew 
him. In setting down " When thoughts of the last bitter hour 
come like a blight over thy spirit," he was not indulging in 
any far-fetched fancy ; he was alluding to what the rninister 
brought home to him in two sermons every Sunday and to 
the unfailing subject of discussion at the mid-week prayer 
meeting. And when he wrote of approaching the grave " sus- 
tained and soothed by an unfaltering trust," he was writing 
of a trust which needed to be especially strong to face the 
thought of possible damnation. 

In a broad sense all true poetry is religious, for it deals 
with truths that lie beneath life and leads to higher thinking 
and better living, but the religion of the youthful Bryant was 
specialized to a single creed. The point is strikingly illustrated 
by the " Hymn to Death." The first four fifths of this poem 
were written when he was twenty-five years old, a meditation 
based on Puritan theology. All men die, he said, even those 
one loves ; but death is really God's instrument to punish the 



1 62 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

wicked. Oppressors, idolaters, atheists, perjurers, revelers, 
slanderers, the sons of violence and fraud are struck down. 

Thus, from the first of time, hast thou been found 
On virtue's side ; the wicked, but for thee, 
Had been too strong for the good ; the great of earth 
Had crushed the weak for ever. 

Then, with the poem left at this stage, Bryant's father died 
while still in the height of his powers and as the result of 
exposure in meeting his duties as a country doctor. In the 
face of this calamity the young poet's verses seemed to him 
a bitter mockery : 

Shuddering I look 
On what is written, yet I blot not out 
The desultory numbers ; let them stand, 
The record of an idle revery. 

This leads to the second characteristic of Bryant's earlier 
verse — more often than not it was self-conscious and self- 
applied. He wrote to " The Yellow Violet " and devoted five 
stanzas to it, but ended with three more of self-analysis. The 
stanzas " To a Waterfowl " have a general and beautiful appli- 
cation, but they were pointed in his mind by the thought that 
he needed aid to "lead my steps aright" in the choice of his 
life's vocation. Even the modest autumn flower, the " Fringed 
Gentian," reminded him of the autumn of his own life and the 
hope that he might do as the flower, and look to heaven when 
the hour of death drew near. This was the voice of youth 
which takes life as a personal matter and assumes, out of 
sheer inexperience, that to his concrete wants " the converging 
objects of the universe perpetually flow." Maturity makes the 
wise man lift his eyes unto the hills whence cometh his help, 
instead of continually brooding on his own hopes and fears. 
But this habit of self-examination was natural not only to the 
young Puritan, vaguely dissatisfied with the barren existence 
of a country lawyer ; it was closely akin to the sentimentalism 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 1 63 

of the age (see pp. 125 and 148). Bryant was like many of 
the late eighteenth-century poets, dramatists, and novelists in 
his belief that quickness of emotion was admirable in itself 
and that the tenderer emotions were marks of refinement. 
After he had settled in the city he looked back with a glance 
of approval to the days when the springs of feeling were filled 
to the brim. 

I cannot forget with what fervid devotion 

I worshipped the visions of verse and of fame ; 

Each gaze at the glories of earth, sky, and ocean, 
To my kindled emotions was wind over flame. 

And deep were my musings in life's early blossom, 
Mid the twilight of mountain-groves wandering long ; 

How thrilled my young veins, and how throbbed my full bosom, 
When o'er me descended the spirit of song. 

There is a slight touch of self -commendation in his continual 
references to his thrills and awes and adorations and in the 
"pleasurable melancholy," as Poe called it, with which he 
enjoyed life, but we shall see that life in the city changed 
this for something more positive. 

Before turning away from this period, however, the student 
should take heed of its poetic form. The remarkable thing 
about " Thanatopsis " was not that Bryant should have enter- 
tained the thoughts it contains or that he should have aspired 
to write them, but that he expressed them in verses that were 
so beautiful and so different from anything ev^^ntteh before 
in~A"merica. It \ras~fheiF7orm at which Dana exclairried"^ 
his much-quoted remark to Phillips in the North American 
Review office. When Bryant was a boy our native writers 
were, all but Freneau, in the habit of imitating the English 
poets and essayists who had set the style a full hundred years 
before. The young American who felt a drawing to literature 
saturated himself in the writings of Addison, Pope, Goldsmith, 
Johnson, and their followers (see pp. 70, 93, 116, etc.). The 



l64 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

verses of these men were neat, clean-cut, and orderly, and filed 
down their pages like regiments of soldiers on dress parade. 
They went along in rimed pairs, with a place to draw breath 
near the middle of each line, a slight pause at the end of the 
first, and a full stop at the end of the second. As a fashion, 
to be sure, it was no more natural than the high, powdered 
headdresses and hoop skirts which prevailed with the ladies 
at the same time, but it was a courtly literary convention, and 
it could be acquired by any writer who was patient and pains- 
taking. In 1785 the best that John Trumbull could hope for 
America was that it might produce copyists of these English- 
men, and he expressed his hope in the usual set style — like 
a boy scout in uniform dreaming of the day when he and his 
fellows may develop into Leonard Woodses and Pershings 
(see p. 70). And Joseph Rodman Drake, writing in one of 
the years when " Thanatopsis " was lying unpublished in 
Dr. Bryant's desk, put his desire into an even more com- 
plex measure, a modification of the Spenserian stanza (see 
p. 136). 

Bryant, it will JDe remembered, made his first poetic flights in 
the style of Pope, and he did well enough to be apparently on 
the highroad of old-fashioned imitation. Then suddenly, while 
still a boy, he lifted himself out of the rut of rime and began 
writing a free, fluent "blank verse." It is the same five-stressed 
measure which Pope used, — the measure of Shakespeare too, 
" If music he the food of love, play on" — but it is without 
rime, and the pauses come where the sense demands instead 
of where the versification dictates. In the passages just cited 
from Trumbull and Drake there is only one line where the 
sense runs on without a slight pause, — the sense is forced to 
conform to the rhythm ; but in " Thanatopsis," although the 
rhythm is quite regular, the pauses occur at all sorts of places, 
and seldom at the line-ends. As Bryant set down the first 
seven and four-fifth lines, for example, they read : 



1 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 165 

To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language ; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides 
Into his darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness, ere he is aware ; 

but broken into groups, as one would read them, they fall : 

To him who in the love of Nature 
Holds communion with her visible forms, 
She speaks a various language ; 
For his gayer hours she has a voice of gladness, 
And a smile and eloquence of beauty. 
And she glides into his darker musings, 
With a mild and healing sympathy. 
That steals away their sharpness, ere he is aware. 

This was nothing new in poetry. Shakespeare had written 
his plays almost entirely in this way, and Milton all of " Para- 
dise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," and the later English 
poets, most notably Wordsworth, had just returned to it ; but 
in America it was as unfamiliar as the " free verse " which is 
puzzling a good many readers to-day partly because it is printed 
in units of meaning instead of units of measure. No wonder 
that Dana was surprised, " on this side the Atlantic." 

When Bryant went down into the crowded activity of New 
York City the general tone of his work began to change. 
The things that he was doing interested him as the practice 
of law never had done. The editorship of the Evening 
Post made him not merely a news vender but a molder of 
public thought, and his entrance into the world of opinion 
gave him more of an interest in life itself and less in his 
own emotions. Very soon he wrote the " Hymn of the City" 
to record his discovery that God lived in. the town as well as 



1 66 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

in the country and that he was the God of life quite as 
much as the God of death. 

Thy Spirit is around, 
Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along ; 

And this eternal sound — 
Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng — 

Like the resounding sea, 
Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee. 

Then in "The Battle Field" (1837) and "The Antiquity of 
Freedom" (1842) he moved on to what was a new thought in 
his verse. He was still interested in beauty, whether it were 
the beauty of nature or the beauty of holiness ; but as a man 
who had plunged thto the thicFoF'tTTrngT he became for the 
first time wide-awake to the idea that as the world grows older 
it grows wiser and that the well-rounded life cannot be content 
simply to contemplate the beauties of June, for it must also 
have some part in the struggle for justice. He had grown into 
nothing less than a new idea of God. As a young Puritan he 
had felt Him to be a power outside, who managed things. He 
had been content to pray, " Thy will be done on earth as it is 
in heaven," and then he had turned his back on earth and 
meditated about heaven. But now he aspired to do with heaven 
what Addison had attempted to do with " philosophy," and 
bring it down from the clouds into the hearts of men. When 
he wrote, in "The Battle Field," "Truth crushed to earth shall 
rise again," he meant, as the rest of the poem shows, not the 
old truth of centuries but the unfamiliar truth which the new 
age must set on its throne. 

There is perhaps no more striking illustration of the adop- 
tion of so-called new truth than in the world's attitude toward 
the holding of property in human life. Up to the time of 
Bryant's birth slaveholding had been practiced in all the United 
States, by the Puritans of New England as well as by the Cava- 
liers of the South. During the colonial days in both regions 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 1 67 

the Bible had been accepted as final authority. What it coun- 
seled and what it did not prohibit was right, and what it 
condemned was wrong ; and, judged on these grounds, slavery 
was apparently sanctioned in the Bible. In spite of this, many 
leaders, both North and South, protested against the practice 
before 1 800. As time went on, largely on account of the climate 
and the nature of the industries, slavery waned in the North and 
thrived in the South. Then in New England the great agita- 
tion arose ; but still, in Massachusetts as well as in Virginia, 
the men whose bank accounts were involved defended human 
bondage on Scriptural grounds, protesting violently against 

creeds that dare to teach 
What Christ and Paul refrained to preach. 

Yet in the end the principle for which the Revolution was 
fought was reaffirmed in behalf of the slaves who were serving 
the sons of the Revolution. 

Bryant became painfully conscious of the many issues to be 
fought out in the cause of liberty and in " The Antiquity of 
Freedom " he wrote of the eternal vigilance and the eternal 
conflict needed to maintain it. 

Oh! not yet 
May'st thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by 
Thy sword ; nor yet, O Freedom ! close thy lids 
In slumber ; for thine enemy never sleeps, 
And thou must watch and combat till the day 
Of the new earth and heaven. 

That combat is still on ; the right of the subject --including 
woman — to a voice in the government, the right of the laborer 
to a fair return on his work, and the right of the smaller nation 
to undisturbed independence are among the uppermost prob- 
lems that occupy the mind of the world to-day. 

Like many of his thoughtful countrymen Bryant founded his 
loyalty to America on the hope that in this new land the seed 



1 68 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of new truth would fall on fertile soil. In "Earth," composed 
when he was in Italy, he wrote : 

O thou, 
Who sittest far beyond the Atlantic deep, 
Among the sources of thy glorious streams. 
My native Land of Groves ! a newer page 
In the great record of the world is thine ; 
Shall it be fairer ? Fear, and friendly Hope, 
And Envy, watch the issue, while the lines 
By which thou shalt be judged, are written down. 

The number and bulk of his poems dedicated to America 
are not so great as those by Freneau or Whittier and Lowell 
or Timrod and Lanier, but his smaller group are as distin- 
guished and as representative as an equal number by any of 
the others except, possibly, Lowell. In " O Mother of a 
Mighty Race " he alluded again to the envy and unfriendli- 
ness of the 'older nations, which disturbed him as it did Irving 
and Cooper. In the face of it he tried, with less success than 
Irving, to keep his own temper, taking comfort in the thought 
that the downtrodden and oppressed of Europe could find 
shelter here and a chance to live. As a journalist he was a 
strong champion of Abraham Lincoln long before the conserv- 
ative East had given him unreserved support; and when the 
Civil War came on he sounded " Our Country's Call " and 
encouraged all within sound of his voice in "" the grim resolve 
to guard it well." During the war he wrote from time to time 
verses that were full of devotion to the right and quite free 
from the note of hate that poisons most war poetry ; and at 
the end he mourned the death of Lincoln no less fervently 
than he rejoiced at " The Death of Slavery." 

Aside from these poems and others of their kind, which 
make the connection between Bryant the editor and Bryant the 
poet, he continued to write on his old themes — nature and 
the individual life. There was no complete reversal of atti- 
tude ; some of the later poems were reminders of some of the 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 169 

earlier ones. Yet a real change came after he had mixed with 
the world. At first he was inclined to lament the loss of the 
old life, seeming to forget how irksome it had been when he 
was in the midst of it. In such personal verses as " I cannot 
forget with what fervid devotion" and "I broke the spell that 
held me long " he was indulging in the luxury of mild self- 
pity. " In my younger days I had lots of time, but no money 
and few friends. Now I have friends and an income, but alas, 
I have no time." This was but a temporary mood, however. 
It is quite clear from his later poems that he enjoyed life more 
in town than in country. This is proven by the fact that nature 
did not continue to suggest mournful thoughts. "The Planting 
of the Apple Tree" is serenely recorded in "quaint old rhymes." 
Instead of saying, as in his earlier manner: "We plant this 
apple tree, but we plant it only for a few short years. Then it 
will die, like all mankind. Perhaps I may be buried beneath 
its shade," he said : " Come, let us plant it. It will blossom 
and bear fruit which will be eaten in cottage and palace, here 
and abroad. And when it is old, perhaps its aged branches will 
throw thin shadows on a better world than this is now. Who 
knows ? " The stanzas on "Robert of Lincoln" are not merely 
free from sadness ; they are positively jolly. 

In the last years of his long career — he lived to be eighty- 
four — he seems at first glance to have gone back to his youth- 
ful sadness ; but this is not really the case, for thoughts which 
are premature or affected in youth are natural to old age. At 
eighty-two, in "A Lifetime" and "The Flood of Years" he 
actually looked back over many bereavements and forward but 
a very short way to the life after death. The two poems taken 
together are an old man's farewell to the world. Like the poem 
with which he won his first fame, they present another glimpse 
of death, but this time it is a fair prospect of 

A present in whose reign no grief shall gnaw 
The Heart, and never shall a tender tie 
Be broken. 



lyo A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

When Bryant came to his seventieth birthday there was a 
notable celebration at the Century Club in New York City. At 
that time three poems were read by three of his fellow-poets — 
Holmes, Lowell, and Whittier, What they said throws a great 
deal of light on Bryant's part in American life and literature. 
Holmes sang his praises as a poet of nature, a journalist of high 
ideals, a writer of solemn and majestic verse whose later works 
fulfilled the promise of his first great poem. Lowell went a 
step farther in paying his tribute to Bryant as a poet of faith 
and freedom and as a citizen who gave life and courage to the 
nation during the crisis of the Civil War. In this respect the 
author of " The Battle Field " was quite as much of a pioneer 
as in his poems about birds and flowers. He was far ahead of 
most of his countrymen in his feeling for America as a nation 
among nations — not merely in the slightly indignant mood of 
" O Mother of a Mighty Race," but better in his feeling that 
new occasions bring new duties. Finally, Whittier revered 
Bryant as a man. With all admiration for his art, 

His life is now his noblest strain, 
His manhood better than his verse I 

In his later years Bryant was one of the best citizens of New 
York. His striking presence on the streets, with his white hair 
and beard and his fine vigor, made poetry real to the crowds who 
were inclined to think of it as something impersonal that existed 
only in books. On account of his powers as a public speaker 
and his place in literature he was often called on to deliver 
memorial addresses, and was affectionately named "the old man 
eloquent." His orations on Cooper and Irving were among the 
first of these. His last was in 1878, at the unveiling of a statue 
to the Italian patriot Mazzini. As he was returning into his home 
he fell, receiving injuries from which he died shortly after. It 
was fitting that his last words should have been in praise of a 
champion of freedom and that he should have died with the 
echoes of his countrymen's applause still ringing in his ears. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 171 

BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

William Cullen Bryant. The Life and Works of. Parke Godwin, 
editor. 6 vols. Vols. I and II, Biography, 1883; Vols. Ill and IV, 
Poetical Works, 1883 ; Vols. V ^nd VI, Prose Writings, 1884-1889. 
Best single- volume edition is The Household, 1909, and The Roslyn, 
1910. His poems appeared originally as follows: The Embargo, 
1808; Poems, 1821, 1832, 1834, 1836, 1839, 1840; The Fountain 
and Other Poems, 1842 ; The White- Footed Deer and Other Poems, 
1844; Poems, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1850, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857. A 
Forest Hymn [i860]; In the Woods, 1863; Thirty Poems, 1864; 
Hymns [1864]; Voices of Nature, 1865; The Song of the Sower, 
1 871; The Story of the Fountain, 1872; The Little People of the 
Snow, 1873 ; Among the Trees [1874]; The Flood of Years, 1878; 
Unpublished Poems of Bryant and Thoreau, 1907. 

Bibliography 

Sturges, H. C. Prefixed to the Roslyn edition of Bryant and also 
published separately. Also Cambridge History of American 
Literature, Vol. I, pp. 517-521. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by Parke Godwin. Vols. I and II of the Life and 

"Works in 6 vols. 
BiGELOW, J. William Cullen Bryant. 1890. 
Bradley, W. A. MViWiam^ullen Bryant (KM. L. Series). 1905. 
Collins, Churton. Poets and Poetry of America. 
Curtis, G. W. The Life, Character, and Writings of William Cullen 

Bryant. 1879. 
Leonard, W. E. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, 

Bk. II, in chap. v. 
Palmer, G. H. Atlas Essays. 
POE, E. A. William Cullen Bryant. Complete Works. Vol. VIII. 

1902. 
Stedman, E. C. Genius and Other Essays. 1911. 
Stedman, E. C. Poets of America. 1885. 
Taylor, B. Critical Essays and Literary Notes. 1880. 
Van Doren, Carl. Growth of Thanatopsis. Nation, Vol. CI, p. 432. 
Wilkinson, W. C. A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters. 

1874. 
Wilson, J. G. Bryant and his Friends. 1886. 
Woodberry, G. E. America in Literature. 1903. 



172 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the early poems of Bryant with reference to the prevalence 
of death in them and particularly to the unexpected appearance of 
this idea. 

Read them again with reference to the sentimentalism in them. 

Read " A Forest Hymn " and the " Hymn to Death " for a com- 
parison of the blank verse with that in " Thanatopsis." 

Read "The Battle Field " and Wordsworth's sonnet "Written above 
Westminster Abbey " for the different but sympathetic developments 
of the same idea. 

Compare Bryant's " Robert of Lincoln " and " The Planting of 
the Apple Tree" with Freneau's "The Wild Honeysuckle" and 
" To a Caty-did." 

Read Bryant's " Song of the Sower," Lanier's " Corn," and Tim- 
rod's " The Cotton Boll " for evident points of likeness and difference. 

Note in detail the relation between Bryant's journalistic career and 
the turn of his mind in the poetry of the journalistic period. 

Bryant wrote no journalistic poetry in the sense in which Freneau 
did, or Whittier, or Lowell. For an explanation see his verses on 
" The Poet." 



CHAPTER XII 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Edgar Allan Poe (i 809-1 849) is one of the two American 
poets regarded with greatest respect by authors and critics in 
England and on the Continent. To Whitman respect is paid 
because he is so essentially American in his subject matter and 
point of view ; it is yielded to Poe because his subject matter 
is so universal — located out of space and out of time — and be- 
cause he was such a master craftsman in his art. Whitman was 
intensely national and local, looking on life, however broadly he 
may have seen it, always from his American vantage point. 
Poe was utterly detached in his creative writing, deriving his 
maturer tales and poems neither from past nor present, neither 
from books nor life, but evolving them out of his perfervid 
imagination and casting the best of them into incomparable 
form. Poe is therefore sometimes said to have been in no way 
related to the course of American literature ; but this judgment 
mistakenly overlooks his unhappily varied career as a magazine ^ 
contributor and editor. He has a larger place in the history of 
periodicals than any other American man of letters. His con- 
nection with at least four is the most distinguished fact that can 
now be adduced in their favor ; and his frustrated ambition to 
found and conduct a monthly in " the cause of a Pure Taste " 
was a dream for a thing which his country sorely needed. 

Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809. His parents were 
actors — his father a somewhat colorless professionalized ama- 
teur, his mother brought up as the daughter of an actress and 
moderately successful in light and charming roles. By 181 1 
the future poet, a brother two years older, and a sister a year 
younger were orphans. Each was adopted into a different 
173 



174 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

home — Edgar into that of Mr. John Allan, a well-to-do Rich- 
mond merchant, to whom he owed, more permanently than any 
other gift, his middle name. The boy was given the generous 
attention of an only child. From 1815 to 1820, while his foster 
father's business held him in residence across the Atlantic, 
he was in English schools. Then for five years he was in a 
Richmond academy, and during 1825 apparently studied under 
private tutors. Up to the time of his admission to the Uni- 
versity of Virginia he was handsome, charming, active-minded, 
and perhaps somewhat " spoiled." Although only seventeen he 
had passed through a love affair culminating in an engagement, 
which was very naturally broken by the father of the other 
contracting party. 

With his year at the university Poe entered on the unfortu- 
nate succession of eccentricities that blighted all the rest of 
his tumultuous career and hastened him to an early and tragic 
death. He did everything intensely, though he was methodical 
and industrious ; but his method was not equal to his intensity, 
and from time to time, with increasing frequency, unreasoned 
or foolish or mad impulses carried him off his balance and into 
all sorts of trouble. Thus, at the university he stood well in 
his classes, but he drank to excess (and he was so constituted 
that a very little was too much) and he played cards reck- 
lessly and very badly, so that at the year's end his " debts of 
honor " amounted to over two thousand dollars. Thus again, 
after a creditable year and a half in the army he had earned 
the office of sergeant major and had secured honorable discharge 
and admission to West Point, but in this coveted academy he 
neglected his duties and courted the dismissal which came to 
him within six months. Thus in one editorial position after 
another he met his obligations well and brilliantly until he came 
to the inevitable breaking point with his less talented em- 
ployers. And thus, finally, in the succession of love affairs 
which preceded and followed his married life the violence of 
his feelings made him irresponsible and intolerable. Again 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 1 75 

and again just at the times when he most needed full control 
of himself he became intoxicated ; yet he was not an habitual 
drinker, and in the long intervals between his lapses he 
doubtless deserved from many another the famous testimony 
of Nathaniel Parker Willis : 

With the highest admiration for his genius, and a willingness to let it 
atone for more than ordinary irregularity, we were led by common 
report to expect a very capricious attention to his duties, and occa- 
sionally a scene of violence and difficulty. Time went on, however, 
and he was invariably punctual and industrious. With his pale, beau- 
tiful and intellectual face, as a reminder of what genius was in him, it 
was impossible, of course, not to treat him with deferential courtesy, 
and, to our occasional request that he would not' probe too deep in a 
criticism, or that he would erase a passage colored too highly with 
his resentments against society and mankind, he readily and cour- 
teously assented — far more yielding than most men, we thought, on 
points so excusably sensidve. 

Willis, however, was more considerate and far more intelli- 
gent than others, giving Poe no new ground for the " resent- 
ments against society and mankind " which he cherished against 
all too many with whom he had differed. On the whole he was 
a victim not of friends or foes or " circumstances over which 
he had no control " but of the erratic temperament with which 
fate had endowed him. He was like Byron and Shelley in his 
youthful enjoyment of privilege and good fortune, in his violent 
rejection of conventional ease and comfort, in his unhappy life 
and his early death. It is impossible to conceive that any de- 
visable set of conditions would in the end have served Poe better. 
He was one of the very few who have been truly burdened with 
" the eccentricities of genius." 

The first milestone in his literary career was in 1827. 
Mr. Allan's refusal to honor his gambling debts resulted in 
withdrawal from the university and the first clear-cut break with 
his patron. Shortly after appeared "Tamerlane and Other 
Poems. By a Bostonian. Boston : Calvin F. S. Thomas . . . 



1/6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Printer, 1827, pp. 40." It was a little book in which the 
passion and the pathos of his whole life were foreshadowed 
in the early couplet, 

Know thou the secret of a spirit 

Bowed from its wild pride into shame. 

"Tamerlane," the title poem, was a Byronic effusion without 
either structure or a rational theme, but with a kind of fire 
glowing through in occasional gleams of poetry and flashes 
of power. It was the sort of thing that had already been done 
by the youthful Drake in '" Leon " and that Timrod was to 
attempt in "A Vision of Poesy," but though all three were 
boyishly imitative, Poe's was the most genuine as a piece of 
self -revelation. This volume was followed by " Al Aaraaf, 
Tamerlane, and Minor Poems" in 1829, shortly before his 
admission to West Point, and by the "Poems" of 183 1 just 
after his dismissal, each largely inclusive of what had appeared 
before, with omissions, changes, and some new poems but no 
distinctively new promise. 

Then for a while he settled in Richmond, receiving an allow- 
ance from Mr. Allan, with whom he had experienced two 
estrangements and two reconciliations. In 1832 five of his 
prose tales were printed in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier. 
The fruits of his unwearying devotion to authorship began to 
mature in 1833, when he was awarded a hundred-dollar prize 
for a short story in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, and when 
the first prize for a poem in the same competition was withheld 
from him only because of his success with the "MS. Found in 
a Bottle." From then on his literary activities were interwoven 
with the development of American journalism. His poems, 
tales,, and critical articles appeared in no less than forty-seven 
American periodicals, from dailies to annuals, and he served 
in the editorial offices of five. 

First of these was the Southern Literary Messenger, with 
which he was connected in Richmond, Virginia, from July, 1835, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 1 77 

till January, 1837. This monthly had already printed some 
fifteen poems and stories by Poe, and during his editorship 
included eleven more ; but in that year and a half he discovered 
and developed his powers, as a critic — powers which, though of 
secondary value, had more to do with advancing his reputation 
and building up the Messenger circulation than his creative 
verse and prose. He was writing in a period when abject 
deference to English superiority was giving way to a spirit of 
provincial puffery. In April, 1836, he wrote : 

We are becoming boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a too 
speedily assumed literary freedom. We throw off with the most pre- 
sumptuous and unmeaning hauteur all deference whatever to foreign 
opinion ... we get up a hue and cry about the necessity of encouraging 
native writers of merit — we blindly fancy that we can accomplish this 
by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent, without taking 
the trouble to consider that what we choose to denominate encourage- 
ment is thus, by its general application, precisely the reverse. In a 
word, so far from being ashamed of the many disgraceful literary fail- 
ures to which our own inordinate vanities and misapplied patriotism 
have lately given birth, and so far from deeply lamenting that these daily 
puerilities are of home manufacture, we adhere pertinaciously to our 
original blindly conceived idea, and thus often find ourselves involved 
in the gross paradox of liking a stupid book the better because, sure 
enough, its stupidity is American. 

The fresh honesty of this point of view was doubtless reen- 
forced by the local gratification which Poe afforded a body of 
Southern readers in laying low the New York Knicker- 
bockers and worrying the complacent New Englanders. At 
all events, the circulation of the Messenger rose from seven 
hundred to five thousand during his editorship. 

After his break with the proprietor, which came suddenly 
and unaccountably, there was a lapse of a year and a half before 
he took up his duties with Burton s Gentleman s Magazine, 
continuing in a perfunctory way for about a year (July, 1839- 
June, 1840) when, with much bitter feeling, the connection 



178 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

was severed. In the following April Burton s was bought out 
and combined with Graham's feeble monthly, The Casket, as 
Graham s Magazine, and Poe gave over his own design to 
found the Pemi Magazme to join forces with a new employer. 
In the year that ensued he wrote and published several analytical 
tales and continued his aggressive criticism, while the magazine, 
under good management, ran its circulation up from eight to 
forty thousand. Then suddenly, in May, 1842, he was a free 
lance once more, facing this time two years of duress before he 
secured another salaried position, now with the Evening Mirror 
and the tactful Willis, as a "' mechanical paragraphist." The 
months of quiet routine with this combination daily-weekly were 
marked by one overshadowing event, the burst of applause with 
which " The Raven " was greeted. It was the literary sensation 
of the day, it was supplemented by the chance publication in 
the same month of a tale in Godey s and a biographical sketch 
in Graham s, and it was reprinted in scores of papers. Such 
general approval, dear to the heart of any artist, seems for the 
moment to have lifted Poe out of his usual saturnine mood. 
" I send you an early number of the B. Journal," he wrote to 
his friend F. W. Thomas, " containing my ' Raven.' It was 
copied by Briggs, my associate, before I joined the paper. 
The ' Raven ' has had a great ' run ' . . . — but I wrote it for the 
express purpose of running — just as I did the 'Gold Bug,' 
you know. The bird has beat the bug, though, all hollow." 

The reference to his new associate records another editorial 
shift. Poe's position on the Mirror had been too frankly subordi- 
nate to last long, and with the best of good feelings he changed 
to an associate editorship of the Broadway Joiimal'm. February, 
1845. With the next October he had realized his long-cherished 
ambition by obtaining full control ; yet before the year was out, 
for lack of money and of business capacity, his house of 
cards had fallen and the Journal was a thing of the past. One 
more magazine contribution of major importance remained for 
him. This was the publication in Godey s, from May to 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 179 

October, 1846, of "The Literati," a series of comments on 
thirty-eight New York authors, done in his then well-known 
critical manner. His story- writing was nearly over ; "' The Cask 
of Amontillado " was the only important one of the last half 
dozen, but of the twelve poems later than the " Raven," four 
— " Ulalume," ''To Helen," "Annabel Lee," and "The 
Bells " — are among his best known. 

The personal side of Poe's life after his last breach with 
Mr. Allan, in 1834, is largely clouded by poverty and bitterness 
and a relaxing grip on his own powers. His marriage to his 
cousin, Virginia Clemm, in 1836 was unqualifiedly happy only 
until the undermining of her health, three years later, and from 
then on was the cause of a shattering succession of hopes and 
fears ending with her death in 1847. His relations to most 
other men and women were complicated by his erratic, jealous, 
and too often abusive behavior. Only those friendships endured 
which were built on the magnanimous tolerance or the insuper- 
able amiability of his friends and associates. His nature, which 
was self-centered and excitable to begin with, became perverted 
by mishaps of his own making until the characterization of 
his latest colleague was wholly justified. Said C. F. Briggs to 
James Russell Lowell : 

He cannot conceive of anybody's doing anything, except for his own 
personal advantage ; and he says, with perfect sincerity, and entire 
unconsciousness of the exposition which it makes of his own mind 
and heart, that he looks upon all reformers as madmen ; and it is for 
this reason that he is so great an egoist. . . . Therefore, he attributes 
all the favor which Longfellow, yourself, or anybody else receives 
from the world as an evidence of the ignorance of the world, and the 
lack of that favor in himself he attributes to the world's malignity. 

Under the accumulating distresses of his last two years the 
decline of will-power and self-control terminated with his tragic 
death in Baltimore in 1849. The gossip which pursued him 
all his life has continued relentlessly, even to the point of color- 
ing the prejudices of his biographers, — commonly classified as 



i8o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" malignants " and "amiables," — but only such facts and re- 
ports have been mentioned here as have some legitimate bearing 
on his habits of mind as an author. 

Poe was first a writer of poems, then of prose tales, and then 
jof analytical criticisms, and one may take a cue from his famous 
discussion of the " Raven " by considering them in reverse 
order. His theory of art can be derived from the seventy-odd 
articles on his contemporaries which he printed and reprinted, 
from the days of the Southern Literary Messenger to those of 
Godeys, and from the summarized essays which he formulated 
in the three latest years. " The Philosophy of Composition " 
and "The Poetic Principle" are equally well illustrated by his 
own poems and his comments on the poems of others. He 
accepts the division of the world of mind into Intellect, which 
concerns itself with Truth ; Taste, which informs us of the 
Beautiful ; and the Moral Sense, which is regardful of Duty. 
He defines poetry of words as " The Rhythmical Creation of 
Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the 
Conscience it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, 
it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth." 
In the moods aroused by the contemplation of beauty man's 
soul is elevated most nearly to the level of God ; and the privi- 
lege of Poetry — one refrains from using such a word as " func- 
tion " — is to achieve an elevation of soul which springs from 
thought, feeling, and will, but which is above them all. 

For the composition of poetry, thus limited in its province, 
he developed a fairly rigid formula, a Procrustes bed on 
which he laid out his several contemporaries. Poems, he said, 
should be brief ; they should start with the adoption of a novel 
and vivid effect ; they should be pitched in a tone of sadness ; 
they should avail themselves of fitting refrains ; they should 
be presented, in point of setting, within a circumscribed space ; 
and always they should be scrupulously regardful of conven- 
tional poetic rhythms. These artistic canons are largely observed 
in his poems and severely insisted on in his criticisms. He 



EDGAR ALLAN POE i8i 

was immensely interested in detail effects, and hardly less so 
in the isolated details themselves. All the fallacious and incon- 
sistent metaphors of Drake's " Culprit Fay," for example, by 
which the reader is distracted, he assembled into a final 
indictment of that hasty poem ; and in the works of Elizabeth 
Barrett, of whom he was one of the earliest champions, he 
discussed diction, syntax, prosody, and lines of distinguished 
merit in the minutest detail. Seldom in these critiques does 
he rise to the task of expounding principles, and more seldom 
still does he discuss any principles of life. Always it is the cameo, 
the gold filigree, the miniature on ivory under the microscope. 
It is not unfair to apply his own method to him, with refer- 
ence, for instance, to poetic passages he most admired, by 
quoting a few of his quotations. From Anna Cora Mowatt : 

Thine orbs are lustrous with a light 

Which ne'er illumes the eye 
Till heaven is bursting on the sight 

And earth is fleeting by. 

From Fitz-Greene Halleck : 

They were born of a race of funeral flowers 
That garlanded in long-gone hours, 
A Templar's knightly tomb. 

From Bayard Taylor : 

In the red desert moulders Babylon 

And the wild serpent's hiss 
Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone 

And waste Persepolis. 

From William Wallace : 

The very dead astir within their coffined deeps. 

From Estelle Anna Lewis : 

Etna's lava tears — 
Ruins and wrecks and nameless sepulchres. 



1 82 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

And from Bryant the concluding familiar lines of " Thana- 
topsis." These are the natural selections of the mind which 
evolved "The Masque of the Red Death" and "The Cask 
of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." 
His readiness to indulge in a " pleasurable melancholy " led 
him to delight chiefly in the mortuary beauties of his fellow-poets. 

At times, to be sure, he responded to the beauties of entire 
compositions. " Thanatopsis," "To a Waterfowl," "June," 
all appealed to him for the "elevation of soul" on which he 
laid critical stress, and so did poems hither and yon by others 
than Bryant. But for the most part even those productions 
which stirred or pleased him resulted in detailed technical 
comments on defects of unity or structure or style, and for 
the most part what he commended was not so much ideas as 
poetic concepts. He could lose himself in the chromatic tints 
from one facet of a diamond to the extent of quite forgetting 
the stone in its entirety. Hence it was that Poe was a poet 
in the limited sense of one who is highly and consciously 
skilled in the achievement of poetic effects, but by his own 
definition of poetry wholly uninspired toward the presentation 
of poetic truth. If the creative gift is "to see life steadily and 
to see it whole," Poe was as far from fulfilling the equation as 
mortal could be — as far, let us say, as William Blake was. 

This is not to say that Poe failed to appreciate or to write 
the kind of poetry in which he believed. It is an estimate of 
his own sense of values rather than for the moment of his 
performance. A letter to Lowell written in 1844 presents the 
negative background against which his theory and practice are 
thrown into relief. 

I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate, 

— the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a 
reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think 
that human exertion will have no appreciable effect on humanity. . . . 
I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual in man the mass. 

— I have no belief in spirituality. I think the word a mere word. . . . 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 183 

You speak of "an estimate of my life," — and, from what I have 
already said, you will see that I have none to give. I have been too 
deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things 
to give any continuous effort to anything — to be consistent in anything. 
My life has been whim — impulse — passion — a longing for solitude 
— a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future. 

An estimate of his own plays and poems can be fairly made 
only in the light of this thing that he set out to do, a fairness 
of treatment, by the way, which he often withheld from the 
objects of his criticism. Not to paraphrase Poe's minute 
analysis of " The Raven," we may select the " Ulalume " of a 
year or two later as a production which satisfies the formula 
of " The Philosophy of Composition " and which is richer in 
meaning and in self-revelation than any other. In length and 
tone and subject and treatment it is according to rule. In 
ninety-four lines of increasing tension the ballad of the bereaved 
lover is told. The effect toward which it moves is the shocked 
moment of discovery that grief for the lost love is not yet 
" pleasurable," but on this anniversary night is still a source 
of poignant bitterness. It is built around a series of unheeded 
warnings — as "The Cask of Amontillado" is — which fall 
with accumulated weight when the lover's cry explains at last 
the mistrusts and agonies and scruples of the pacified Psyche. 
The effect is intensified by use of the whole ominous first 
stanza in a complex of refrains throughout the rest of the 
ballad. The employment of onomatopoeia, or " sound-sense " 
words, is more subtle and more effective than in " The Bells " 
or "The Raven" ; and the event occurs in the usual circum- 
scribed space — the cypress-lined alley which is blocked by 
the door of the tomb. 

These, however, are the mere externals of the poem ; the 
amount *of discussion to which it has been subjected shows 
that, as a poem of any depth should, it contains more than 
meets the eye. It is a bit of life history, for it refers to Poe's 
own bereavement, but it is, furthermore, a piece of analysis 



1 84 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

with a general as well as a personal application. The " I " of 
the ballad is one half of a divided personality, what, for want 
of a better term, may be called the masculine element. He is 
self-confident, blundering, slow to perceive, perfectly brave, in 
his blindness to any cause for fear. Psyche, the soul, is the com- 
plementary, or feminine, element in human nature — intuitive, 
timid, eager for the reassurance that loquacious male stupidity 
can afford her. They are the elements incarnate in Macbeth 
and Lady Macbeth in the early half of the play, and the story 
in " Ulalume " is parallel to the story of Macbeth up to the 
time of the murder. Yet, and here is the defect in Poe, true as 
the analysis may be, in Poe's hands it becomes nothing more 
than that. It is like a stage setting by Gordon Craig or Leon 
Bakst — very somber, very suggestive, very artistic, but so com- 
plete an artifice that it could never be mistaken for anything 
but an analogy to life. It is, in a word, the product of one 
whose "life has been whim — impulse — passion — a longing 
for solitude — a scorn of all things present." 

Poe's briefer lyrics are written to a simpler formula, modi- 
fied from that for the narratives. The resemblance is mainly 
to be found in the scrupulous care and nicety of measure, in 
the adjustment of diction to content, and in the heightened 
dream tone prevailing in them. As they are not attached to 
any scenic background, the appeals to the mind's eye are un- 
encumbered by any obligations to continuity. Poe's technique 
in some of the best is quite in the manner of the twentieth- 
century imagists, and no less effective than in the best of these 
poets at their best. The earlier of the two poems entitled 
" To Helen " is quite matchless in its beauty of sound and 
of suggestion, but it is utterly vulnerable before the kind of 
searching analysis to which he subjected the verse of the 
luckless contemporary who stirred his critical disapproval. 
One has not the slightest objective conception of what " those 
Nicean barks " may have been nor why the beauty which 
attracts a wanderer homeward should be likened to a ship 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 185 

which bears him to his native shore. The two fine Hnes from 
Byron in the second stanza reverberate splendidly in their 
new setting, but again they seem to have small likeness to 
the beauty of Helen. And the last pair of lovely lines are 
altogether beyond understanding. Read in the dream mood, 
however, which is utterly unreasonable but utterly unexacting, 
" To Helen " is as captivating as the sound of a distant melody. 

Poe's tales are of two very different sorts : those that are in 
the likeness of his poetry and those that were done in the 
analytical spirit of his criticism, " Ligeia " is an example of 
the poet's work and, indeed, includes, as some others do, one 
of his own lyrics, " The Conqueror Worm." This is cast in 
the misty mid-region between life and death, with none of the 
pleasures of the one except as foils to the reduplicated horrors 
of the other. In all the laws of construction it is one with 
"The Raven" and '' Ulalume," as it is also in general effect.' 
Like the poems, too, these narratives contain no human interest,; 
unless this is derived from the consciousness that the " I " 
narrator is made in the image of Poe and hence is partly 
his spokesman, — a claim on the attention to which the stories, 
if considered as works of art, have no title. Once again these 
tales and poems are of the same family in the degree to which 
they subordinate any kind of event to the dominant mood and 
in the painstaking use of every accessory that will contribute 
to a sense of shivery horror. 

Perhaps, to indulge in the type of classification that is after 
the manner of Poe, a connecting group should be mentioned 
between the two extreme types. This includes the kind of 
story that substitutes the horrors of crime and its consequences 
for the horrors of death, giving over any elevation of soul for 
the thrill derived from the malignance of fear or hatred. They 
deal with crime as quite distinct from sin, and when they 
involve conscience at all, introduce the conscience that doth 
make cowards of us, rather than the voice of guidance or cor- 
rection. Of this sort are " The Imp of the Perverse " — less a 



1 86 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

tale than an essaylet with an illustrative anecdote — and "The 
Black Cat " and " The Cask of Amontillado." In some ways 
this story of cold-blooded vengeance comes nearer than any 
other of Poe's tales to completely representing its author's 
artistic designs. In the matter of its contrivance it is cut on 
the pattern of "The Raven." One can apply "The Philoso- 
phy of Composition " by replacing each allusion to the poem 
with a parallel from the story, Montresor, the avenger, is an 
incarnate devil ; Fortunato, the victim, is a piece of walking 
vanity not worth bothering to destroy. The slow murder is 
conceived during "the supreme madness of the carnival 
season," is pursued in a tone of grim mockery, and concluded 
with ironic laughter and the jingling of the fool's-cap bells. 
And finally, to free the tale from any least relation to life, the 
assassination does " trammel up the consequence, and catch 
with his surcease, success." 

The stories that show the mind of the critic — and the 
greatest of them come in his later career — are in different 
fashions riddle-solutions, the most famous being " The Mur- 
ders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," 
"The Gold Bug," and "The Purloined Letter," pioneers in 
the field of the detective story. In the elaboration of these 
Poe combined his gift as a narrator with the powers which 
appeared equally in deciphering codes, discrediting Maelzel's 
chess player, dealing with the complications of " Three Sundays 
in a Week," or foreseeing the outcome of " Barnaby Rudge " 
from the opening chapter. Still, as in the earlier types, they 
are composed of the things that life is made of, but themselves 
are uninformed with the breath of life. It has been well said by 
a recent critic that the detective story is in a way a concession 
to the moral sense of the reading public, following the paths 
of the older romance of roguery, but pursuing the wrongdoer to 
the prison or the gallows instead of sharing in his defiance of 
the social order. But this concession is one in which Poe had 
no hand. For him detection is an end in itself ; he is like the 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 187 

sportsman who is stirred by the zest of the hunt and shoots 
to kill, but at the day's end, with fine disregard, hands over 
his bag to the gamekeeper. It should be said as a last word 
in the classification of Poe's stories that the best work in the 
threescore and ten can be found in one fourth of that number, 
that the remainder are in varying degrees overburdened by 
exposition, and that the least successful, unredeemed by tech- 
nical excellence and unanimated by any vital meaning, trail 
off into " sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

As a contemporary figure, to summarize, Poe was a vigorous 
agent in the upbuilding of the American magazine, a stimu- 
lator of honest critical judgment, a writer of a few poems 
and a few tales of the finest but the most attenuated art. At 
his lowest he is a purveyor of thrills to readers of literary 
inexperience, people with just a shade more maturity than the 
habitual matinee-goer ; and at the other end of the scale he 
serves as a stimulant to the decadents who are weary of actual 
life and real romance, whose minds are furnished like the 
apartment in "The Assignation," in the embellishment of 
which " the evident design had been to dazzle and astound." 
At his highest, however, he has exerted an extraordinary 
influence not only on those who have fallen completely into 
his ways but on several prose writers of distinction who have 
bettered their instructions. Wilkie Collins, Conan Doyle, 
Stevenson, Chesterton, are only the beginning of a list, and 
in only one language, who have taken up the detective story 
where Poe laid it down. Wells and Jules Verne have devel- 
oped the scientific wonder-tales. Bierce, Stevenson, Kipling, 
Hardy, have written stories of horror and fantasy ; and the 
touch of his art is suggested by many who have absorbed 
something from it without becoming disciples or imitators 
of it or refiners upon it. 



1 88 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

Edgar Allan Poe. Works. Virginia edition. J. A. Harrison, editor. 
1902. 17 vols. Another edition. E. C. Stedman and G. E. Wood- 
berry, editors, 1894- 189 5. 10 vols. Best single-volume editions are : 
J. H. Whitty, editor, 191 1, and Killis Campbell, editor, 191 7. Poe's 
chief works appeared originally in book form as follows : Tamerlane 
and Other Poems, 1827; Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems, 
1829; Poems, 1 831; Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838; The 
Conchologist's First Book, 1839; Tales of the Grotesque and 
Arabesque, 1839; The Raven, and Other Poems, 1845; Tales, 
1845; Eureka: a Prose Poem, 1848; The Literati, 1850. 

Bibliography 

The best is by Killis Campbell in the Cambridge History of Ameri- 
can Literature, Vol. II, ^p. 452-468. See also Vol. X, Stedman- 
Woodberry edition, and Vol. XVI, J. A. Harrison edition. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life of Poe is by George E. Woodberry. 1884. 
Baskervill, W. M. Southern Writers. 

Beaudelaire, Charles. Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses oeuvres. 1856. 
Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909. 
Campbell, Killis. Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge History of Ameri- 
can Literature, Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. xiv. 
Campbell, Killis. Introduction to Edition of Poems. 1917. 
Collins, J. C. The Poetry and Poets of America. 
France, Anatole. La vie litteraire. Vol. IV. 
Gates, L. E. Studies and Appreciations. 1900. 
Griswold, R. W. Memoir of Poe (with Poe's works). 1850-1856. 
Harrison, J. A. Life and Letters of Poe. 1902. 
HuTTON, R. H. Contemporary Thought and Thinkers. 1900. 
Ingram, J. H. Life, Letters, and Opinions of Poe. 1880. 
Kent, C. W. Poe the Poet (in Vol. VII, Virginia edition). 1902. 
Lang, Andrew. Letters to Dead Authors. 1886. 
Lauvri^re, E. Edgar Poe: sa vie et son oeuvre. 1904. 
Macy, John. Poe. (Beacon Biographies.) 1907. 
Mallarm^, S. Divagations, and Poemes de Edgar Allan Poe. 1888. 
Minor, B. B. The Southern Literary Messenger, 1834-1864. 1905. 
More, P. E. Shelburne Essays. Ser. i. 1907. 
Moses, M. J. Literature of the South. 1910. 

Richardson, C. F. American Literature, Vol. Ill, chap. iv. 1889. 
Robertson, J. M. New Essays towards a Critical Method. 1897. 
Stedman, E. C. Poets of America. 1885 and 1898. 
Stephen, Leslie. Hours in a Library. Ser. i. 
Swinburne, A. C. Under the Microscope. 1872. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 189 

Trent, W. P. Edgar Allan Poe (announced in E.M.L. Ser.). 
Wendell, Barrett. Stelligeri and Other Essays. 1893. 
Whitty, J. H. Memoir in edition of Poe's Poems. 191 1. 
WooDBERRY, G. E. America in Literature, chap. iv. 1908. 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read " The Purloined Letter " and compare it as a detective story 
with any one of Conan Doyle's detections of theft. 

Read the introductions of ten or twelve stories for Poe's method 
of establishing the dominant mood. 

Apply the formula presented in " The Philosophy of Composition " 
to " Annabel Lee " and to any of Poe's best-known prose tales. 

No intelligent estimate of Poe can be reached without reading 
his two analytical essays, " The Philosophy of Composition " and 
"The Poetic Principle." 

Compare the " I " in Poe with the " I " in Whitman. Read 
" William Wilson " and " The Man in the Crowd," which are felt to 
have more of autobiography in them than any others. 

For the influence of Byron on Poe and on various other impres- 
sionable Americans see the index to this volume, and note the variety 
of ways in which it was recorded. 

Light will be thrown on Poe's relationship to the periodicals through 
a reading of passages on the magazines with which he was connected 
in " The Magazine in America," by Algernon Tassin. See also the 
volume called " The Southern Literary Messenger," by B. B. Minor. 



CHAPTER XIII 

■ THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS 

With the passing of Irving, Cooper, and Bryant the leader- 
ship in American letters was lost to New York. Indeed, by 
1850, while all this trio were living, four men in eastern 
Massachusetts were in full career, — Emerson, Longfellow, 
Lowell, and Whittier ; and before the death of Irving, in 
1859, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Holmes came into their full 
powers. The New Yorkers had done a very distinguished 
work. The two prose writers in particular had shown talents 
of which their countrymen could be proud and had introduced 
the New World to the Old, Yet, though their fame was des- 
tined to live, their influence on other authors was bound to die 
with them because they both were looking backward. The 
roots of these men were struck deep in the eighteenth century. 
Cooper's strength lay in his ability to write stories of the 
romantic past. Even when he brought them up to date, as in 
"The Pioneer" and "The Prairie," he presented the decline 
of a passing type of American life. When he wrote of the 
present pointing to the future, as in " Homeward Bound " and 
" Home as Found," he was filled with distress and alarm. 
He was bred in the traditions of aristocracy ; he believed in 
the theories of democracy, but he was very much afraid that 
they would not turn out well in practice. Irving was a gentle- 
man of the old school. He was loyal to the ideals of his 
country and confident of its future, but he was fascinated by 
the traditions of England and Europe, When he wrote of 
the weaknesses of his city and his fellow-citizens he cast his 
gentle satires into the form made popular by two Englishmen 
of a bygone day, and limited himself, as they had done, to 
190 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS 191 

commenting on customs, manners, recreations — the external 
habits of daily life. Of the three Bryant was the only modern: 
man. His later life was finely admirable ; but, though his think- 
ing was wise and just, he influenced men less as a thinker than 
as a stalwart citizen. The New Yorkers, in a word, all wrote 
as men who were educated in the world of action ; they were 
almost untouched by the deeper currents of human thought 
which in the nineteenth century were to make great changes 
in the world. 

In 1 82 1, the year of the fifth edition of "The Sketch 
Book " and " The Spy " and Bryant's first volume, there was 
growing up in the quieter surroundings of Boston a genera- 
tion of New England boys with a different training. They all 
went to and through college, most of them to Harvard, and 
after college they set to reading philosophy. Many of them 
came from a long line of Puritan ancestry, as Bryant did. 
Unlike Bryant several of them felt a distrust and dislike for 
the sternness of the old creeds. Yet they had the strength of 
Puritan character in them and the born habit of thinking 
deeply on " the things that are not seen and eternal." What 
was new in them was that they were prepared to think inde- 
pendently and to come to their own conclusions. The reading 
of these boys was no longer chiefly in Pope, Addison, and 
Goldsmith. It was in the great English writers who were 
just arriving at fame — Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle — 
or in the French and German philosophers. 

In the Concord group — Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne 
— the contrast with the New Yorkers is particularly striking. 
They were anything but men of the world. When they began 
to write they stayed in the seclusion of little villages and waited 
patiently. They matured slowly. Emerson was past middle life 
before America heeded him ; Hawthorne was forty-six at the 
time of his first marked success ; Thoreau's fame did not come 
till after his death. They were not "team workers," Emerson 
was a clergyman for a short while, but retired in the very year 



192 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

when Bryant began his long service with the Evening Post; 
Hawthorne was a recluse for fourteen years after college and 
then held positions reluctantly for only half of his remaining 
life ; Thoreau never put on the harness. They were not swept 
into the current of city life, — ' " warped out of their own orbits," — 
but, instead, they made Concord, whose " chief product " was 
literature, more famous than any center of shipping or banking 
or manufacture. 

" Concord is a little town," Emerson wrote in his Journal, 
"and yet has its honors. We get our handful of every ton 
that comes to the city." In his address at the two hundredth 
anniversary he dwelt on his pride in its history and character. 
He traced the earliest settlement, the partitioning of the land, 
the events leading up to the Revolution, and, in the presence 
of some of the aged survivors, the firing by the embattled 
farmers of "the shot heard round the world" in 1775. The 
institution in Concord that most appealed to him was the town 
meeting, where the whole body of voters met to transact the 
public business. The meetings of those two hundred years 
had witnessed much that was petty, but on the whole they had 
made for good. 

It is the consequence of this institution that not a school-house, a 
public pew, a bridge, a pound, a mill-dam hath been set up, or pulled 
down, or altered, or bought, or sold, without the whole population of 
this town having a voice in the affair. A general contentment is the 
result. And the people truly feel that they are lords of the soil. In 
every winding road, in every stone fence, in the smokes of the poor- 
house chimney, in the clock on the church, they read their own power, 
and consider at leisure the wisdom and error of their judgments. 

Emerson noted that the English government had recently 
given to certain American libraries copies of a splendid edition 
of the " Domesday Book " and other ancient public records of 
England. A suitable return gift, he thought, would be the 
printed records of Concord, not simply because Concord was 
Concord but because Concord was America. " Tell them the 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS 193 

Union has twenty-four states, and Massachusetts is one. Tell 
them that Massachusetts has three-hundred towns, and Concord 
is one ; that in Concord are five hundred rateable polls [that is, 
taxable voters] and every one has an equal vote." In closing his 
address Emerson gave his reason for choosing when thirty-one 
years old to come back to "the fields of his fathers" and spend 
his life there. 

I believe this town to have been the dwelling place at all times since 
its planting of pious and excellent persons, who walked meekly through 
the paths of common life, who served God, and loved man, and never 
let go the hope of immortality. The benediction of their prayers, and 
of their principles lingers around us. 

In the Journal he carries this general indorsement down 
to particulars that would have been out of place in a public 
memorial address. 

Perhaps in the village we have manners to paint which the city life 
does not know. Here we have Mr. S., who is man enough to turn 
away the butcher, who cheats in weight, and introduces another into 
town. The other neighbors could n't take such a step. . . . There is 
the hero who will not subscribe to the flag-staff, or the engine, though 
all say it is mean. There is the man who gives his dollar, but refuses 
to give his name, though all other contributors are set down. There 

is Mr. H., who never loses his spirits, though always in the minority 

Here is Mr. C, who says " honor bright," and keeps it so. Here is 
Mr. S., who warmly assents to whatever proposition you please to 
make, and Mr. M., who roundly tells you he will have nothing to do 
with the thing. Here, too, are not to be forgotten our two companies, 
the Light Infantry and the Artillery, who brought up one the Brigade 
Band and one the Brass Band from Boston, set the musicians side 
by side under the great tree on the Common, and let them play two 
tunes and jangle and drown each other, and presently got the 
companies into active hustling and kicking. 

Thus Concord was a little community with a noble and 
dignified past and at the same time with the homely virtues, 
oddities, and weaknesses of a New England village. In these 



194 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

respects it was a fit dwelling place for the man who made it 
famous, for they were like the town in being both finely 
idealistic and very human. The contrast with the New York 
of these same years is vivid (see pp. no, 113, 190 et al.). 

Centering about Concord, but by no means located within it, 
was a " Transcendental Movement " of which Emerson is con- 
sidered the chief exponent. When the proper nouns " Tran- 
scendentalist " and "Transcendentalism " are used they are made 
to refer to this movement in eastern Massachusetts. In any 
critical sense, however, the thing that they stood for was only 
an expression of world thought and was one of the many out- 
croppings of the movement toward independence of spirit 
which had been developing for generations. The refusal of 
the nineteenth-century mind to submit to a philosophy which 
limited man's faith to the knowledge derived through the 
senses had already brought about in Germany, France, and 
England a reaction which insisted on the right of man to 
believe much which he could not prove. Thus developed 
transcendentalism, a system of thought " based on the assump- 
tion of certain fundamental truths not derived from experience, 
not susceptible of proof, which transcend human life, and are 
perceived directly and intuitively by the human mind." 

This stood in complete contrast with the faith of the Puritans 
and yet in strong resemblance to it. Like the Calvinists the 
Transcendentalists proceeded from a set of assumptions rather 
than a set of facts, but unlike the Calvinists the Transcenden- 
talists drew these assumptions from their own inner conviction 
instead of from a set of dogmas which had been distorted out 
of the Scriptures. They believed in God, and they found his 
clearest expression in the spirit of man and in the natural 
surroundings in which God had placed him. They believed 
that in each man was a spark of divinity. They were assailed 
because they did not acknowledge an utter difference between 
Jesus Christ and the average man, though their sin lay not in 
degrading Christ to the level of man, but in exalting man 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS 195 

potentially to the level of Christ. They insisted that it was 
the duty of each individual to develop the best that was in 
him on earth, thinking more of the life here than of the life 
hereafter. They were inspired by the love of God rather than 
threatened by his wrath, and so they "substituted for a dogmatic 
dread an illimitable hope." 

Fortunately for the influence of this group they inherited 
the sound qualities of Puritan character. They therefore did 
not lay themselves open to attack on account of any wild 
vagaries of conduct. Emerson was a saint, Thoreau an ascetic, 
Bronson Alcott a pure philosopher, Theodore Parker a great 
preacher and reformer, Margaret Fuller a high-minded woman 
of letters, and the scores of their associates just as devoted to a 
high religious ideal as any equal number of the early Pilgrims. 

Two undertakings chiefly focused the group activity of the 
Transcendentalists. The first of these was the Dial, a quarterly 
publication which ran for sixteen numbers, 1 840-1 844. The 
so-called Transcendental Club, an informal group of kindred 
spirits, came toward the end of the thirties to the point where 
they felt the need of an " organ " of their own. After much 
discussion they undertook the publication of this journal of one 
hundred and twenty-eight pages to an issue. For the first two 
years it was under the editorship of Margaret Fuller. When 
her strength failed under this extra voluntary task, Emerson, 
with the help of Thoreau, took charge for the remaining two 
years. Its paid circulation was very small, never reaching two 
hundred and fifty, and finally, when in the hands of its third 
set of publishers, it had to be discontinued, Emerson personally 
meeting the final small deficit. It contained chiefly essays of a 
philosophical nature, but included in every issue a rather rare 
body of verse. The essays reflected and expounded German 
thought and literature and oriental thought, and discussed prob- 
lems of art, literature, and philosophy. The section given to 
critical reviews is extremely interesting for its quick response to 
the new writings which later years have proved and accepted. 



196 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Possibly the nearest analogy of to-day to the old Dial is the 
Hibbert Journal, — the first journal of its kind to achieve an 
international circulation and self-support. The Dial is in a way 
the literary journal or diary of the Transcendental Movement/'' 
in America from 1840 to 1844. 

The other undertaking associated with the Transcendentalists 
is less formally their own venture. This was the Brook Farm 
Institute of Agriculture and Education in West Roxbury, nine 
miles out from Boston, It was financially the undertaking of 
a small group of stockholders of whom the Reverend George 
Ripley was the chief and Nathaniel Hawthorne the man of 
widest later fame. It was an attempt at the start to combine 
"plain living and high thinking," the theory being that the 
group could do their own work and pursue their own intel- 
lectual life. During the first three years, from 1841 to 1844, 
it was carried on as a quiet assembling of idealists who were 
withdrawing slightly from the hubbub of the world. Agriculture 
was supplemented by several other simple industries, a school 
was successfully maintained, and the people who lived there 
were viewed and visited with interest by many who looked on 
in sympathetic amusement. The number of actual residents 
never exceeded one hundred and fifty. Of the leading Tran- 
scendentalists Margaret Fuller was the only one to settle. 
Parker was occupied with his multitudinous duties at Boston ; 
Thoreau attempted his own solution at Walden ; Alcott was 
at his short-lived and ill-fated Fruitlands ; and Emerson stayed 
in Concord with the comment : " I do not wish to remove from 
my present prison to a prison a little larger. ... I have not 
yet conquered my own house. It irks and repents me. Shall 
I raise the siege of this hen coop, and march baffled away to 
a pretended siege of Babylon ? " In the latter half of its life 
Brook Farm was drawn into the communistic movement which 
the French philosopher Charles Fourier had elaborated, and 
was made the first "phalanx" in America. With this move- 
ment its whole nature changed, as it became a part of a great 
social project with a mission to transform the world. An 



THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS 197 

ambitious central building was erected in 1 846, and by an irony 
of fate the uninsured "phalanstery" was burned down at the 
very moment when its completion was being celebrated. This 
last financial burden broke the back of the enterprise, which 
was discontinued in 1847. It is significant of Brook Farm that 
however unqualified a material failure it was, it served as a 
gathering spot for a group of idealists who never ceased to 
recall their life on the Farm as a happy and fruitful experience. 



BOOK LIST 
General References, 

Bibliography 

In GoDDARD, H. C. Studies in New England Transcendentalism. 
1908. See also Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol.1, 
pp. 546-549- 

History and Criticism 

Cooke, G. W. Poets of Transcendentalism : an Anthology with In- 
troductory Essay. 1903. 

Emerson, R. W. The Transcendentalist, in Nature, Addresses and 
Lectures. 

Frothingham, O. B. Transcendentalism in New England, a History. 
1876. 

Goddard, H. C. Studies in New England Transcendentalism. 1908. 

Parker, Theodore. Transcendentalism : a Lecture. 1876. 

Special Biographies 
Alcott, A. B. 

Sanborn, F. B. Bronson Alcott at Alcott House, England, and 

Fruitlands, New England, 1842-1844. 1908. 
Sanborn, F. B. and Harris, Wm. T A. Bronson Alcott: his Life 
and Philosophy. 1893. 2 vols. 

Emerson, R. W. 

See Book List, chap. xiv. 

Fuller, Margaret 

Emerson, R. W., Channing, W. H., and Clarke, J. F. Memoirs of 

Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 1852. 2 vols. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 1884. 
Howe, Julia Ward. Margaret Fuller (Marchesa Ossoh). 1883. 

Parker, Theodore 

Frothingham, O. B. Theodore Parker : a Biography. 1874. 
Weiss, John. Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker. 1864. 
2 vols. 



198 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Ripley, George 

Frothingham, O. B. George Ripley. (A.M.L. Ser.) 1882. 

Thoreau, Henry David 

See Book List, chap. xiv. 

The Dial 

The standard work is by G. W. Cooke. An Historical and Biographical 

Introduction to accompany The Dial as reprinted in Numbers for 

the Rowfant Club, Cleveland. 1902. 2 vols. 
The Dial : a Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion, Vols. 

I-IV. 1 840-1 844. Reprinted by the Rowfant Club of Cleveland, 

I goo- I 903. 

Brook Farm • 

The standard work is by Lindsay Swift. Brook Farm : its Members, 

Scholars, and Visitors. 1900. (Contains bibliography.) 
CODMAN, J. T. Brook Farm: Historic and Personal Memoirs. 1894. 
Cooke, G. W. John Sullivan Dwight, Brook-Farmer, Editor, and Critic 

of Music. 1898. 
Frothingham, O. B. George Ripley. 1882. {A.M. L. Ser.) 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Blithedale Romance. 1852. 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Passages from the American Notebooks. 

1868. 2 vols. 



CHAPTER XIV 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882) was born in Boston. 
He came from old Puritan stock, several of his direct ancestors 
being clergymen. He was one of eight children, of whom six 
were living when his father, the Reverend William Emerson, 
died in 1 8 1 1 . Mr. Emerson had been so beloved by his 
parishioners that they continued to pay his salary for seven 
years, and for three years gave the use of the parish house to 
the family. The nature of these years is presented in the essay 
on "' Domestic Life " : 

Who has not seen, and who can see unmoved, under a low roof, 
the eager, blushing boys discharging as they can their household 
chores, and hastening into the sitting-room to the study of to-morrow's 
merciless lesson, yet stealing time to read one chapter more of the 
novel hardly smuggled into the tolerance of father and mother — 
atoning for the same by some passages of Plutarch or Goldsmith ; 
the warm sympathy with which they kindle each other in school- 
yard, or barn, or wood-shed, with scraps of poetry or song, with 
phrases of the last oration or mimicry of the orator; the youthful 
criticism, on Sunday, of the sermons ; the school declamation, faith- 
fully rehearsed at home. . . . Ah, short-sighted students of books, 
of nature, and of man, too happy could they know their advan- 
tages, they pine for freedom from that mild parental yoke; they 
sigh for fine clothes, for rides, for the theatre, and premature 
freedom and dissipation which others possess. Woe to them if 
their wishes were crowned. The angels that dwell with them, and 
are weaving laurels of life for their youthful brows, are Toil, and 
Want, and Truth, and Mutual Faith. 

There was a great deal of work for the young Emersons in 
the day, but the spirit of play and playfulness survived it all, 
199 



200 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

as this bit of verse shows. It was written by Ralph to his 
brother Edward. 

So erst two brethren climb 'd the cloud-capp 'd hill, 
Ill-fated Jack, and long-lamented Jill, 
Snatched from the crystal font its lucid store. 
And in full pails the precious treasure bore. 
But ah, by dull forgetfulness oppress'd 
(Forgive me, Edward) I 've forgot the rest. 

In due time Emerson went to Harvard, entering the class 
of 1 82 1. Here he earned part of his expenses and profited 
by scholarships, which must have been given him more on 
account of his character than because of his actual performance 
as a student, for he stood only in the middle of his class. He 
was almost hopelessly weak in mathematics, but he won three 
prizes in essay- writing and declamation. He was a regular 
member of one of the debating societies, crossing swords with 
his opponents on the vague and impossible subjects which 
lure the minds of youth. His appointment as class poet at 
graduation argues no special distinction, for it was conferred 
on him after seven others had refused it. All the while, how- 
ever, his mind had been active, and he came out from college 
with the fruits of a great amount of good reading which had 
doubtless somewhat distracted him from the assigned work. 
Emerson's experience at college should not be confused with 
that of many budding geniuses who showed their originality 
by mere eccentricity. With Emerson, as with Hawthorne and 
Thoreau too, the independence appeared simply in his choosing 
the things at which he should do his hardest work. He was 
full of ambition. An entry in the Journal of 1822 proves that 
at this age he was more like the Puritan Milton than the 
care-free Cooper : "In twelve days I shall be nineteen years 
old, which I count a miserable thing. Has any other educated 
person lived so many years and lost so many days ? " He 
blamed himself for dreaming of greatness and doing little to 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 20l 

achieve it, but he decided not yet to give up hope of belong- 
ing to the " family of giant minds." Already, too, he was in 
thought joining his own future with the future of the country 
in such jottings as these. '" Let those who would pluck the 
lot of immortality from Fate's urn, look well to the future of 
America." " To America, therefore, monarchs look with 
apprehension and the people with hope." If his countrymen 
could boast no great accomplishment in the arts, " We have 
a government and a national spirit that is better than persons 
or histories." The judges of his own future utterances were 
to be a nation of free minds, " for in America we have 
plucked down Fortune and set up Nature in his room." 
These comments, of course, reveal the sentiment and the 
lofty rhetoric of the commencement orator, for they were all 
written before he was twenty-two. In later years he wrote 
more simply and less excitedly, but he never forgot that his 
own life was always part of the life of the nation. 

The five years just after graduation were not encouraging. 
He taught in his brother's school for a while, but loathed it 
because he taught so badly. Ill-health harassed him. While 
he was studying in the Divinity School his eyes failed him, 
so that he was excused from the regular examinations at the 
end. And a month after he was admitted to the ministry his 
doctor advised him to spend the winter in the South. It was 
not until 1829, when he was twenty-six years old, that he 
was settled in a pastorate. Then the future seemed assured 
for him. The church was an old and respected one, the 
congregation made up of " desirable " people. If the young 
preacher was able to prepare acceptable sermons and make 
friends among his parishioners, he could be sure of a perma- 
nent and dignified position in his native city. But although 
tliejlock were perfectly satisfied with their shepherd, in three 
years he resigned. He had found that certain of the forms 
of church worship embarrassed him because he could not 
always enter into the spirit of them. Sometimes when the 



202 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

moment for the " long prayer " came, he did not feel moved 
to utter it, and he felt that to " deliver " it as a piece of 
elocution was dishonest and irreverent. Administering the 
holy communion troubled him still more, because he felt 
afraid that to the literal Yankee mind this symbolical ceremony 
was either meaningless or tinged with superstition. So he ex- 
pressed his honest doubts to his congregation, explaining that 
if these features of worship were necessary he could no longer 
continue to be their pastor, and they reluctantly let him go. 

Two years were yet to pass in the preparatory stage of 
Emerson's life. For the first seven months of 1833 he was 
abroad, traveling slowly from Italy up to England, In reading 
his daily comments on what he saw, one finds no trace of the 
eager zest for the novelties of travel enjoyed by Irving and 
Cooper ; he seems rather to have gone through with the tour 
as a sober and conscientious process of education. His most 
vivid experiences were not in seeing places but in meeting 
English authors, and with one of these, Thomas Carlyle, he 
made the beginning of a lifelong friendship. It was like 
Emerson to be especially attracted to Carlyle, who was almost 
unknown at the time, to seek him out on his lonely Scotch 
farm, and to feel a deeper sympathy and admiration for him 
than for famous men like Wordsworth and Coleridge and 
De Quincey. No single man and no amount of public opinion 
ever made up this young American's mind for him. When, 
after a year of preaching and lecturing in America he went 
Tate in 1834 to settle in Concord, the richest memory he 
treasured from his travel was the founding of this new com- 
panionship. In the fabric of the long life that remained to 
him no two threads are more important than those of Concord 
and Carlyle — the place he loved most and the greatest of 
his friends. 

Rightly considered, these thirty-one years are a piece not 
only of Emerson's life ; they are a piece of American history. 
They exhibit the life in Boston of a boy and young man with 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 203 

a fine Puritan inheritance. Among all the traits which came 
down to him from the past, none were more dominant than 
his rectitude and his independence. Like the boys of earliest 
Pilgrim families, he was trained at home in "the uses of 
adversity," given a careful schooling, and sent to college 
to be prepared for the ministry. His mind, like that of his 
ancestors, " derived a peculiar character from the daily con- 
templation of superior beings and eternal interests " ; but like 
some of the strongest of these — like Roger Williams, for 
example (p. 1 1), he was bent on arriving at his own conclusions. 
Fortunately men were no longer persecuted for their religious 
beliefs in the old savage ways. Emerson's withdrawal from the 
pulpit did not forfeit him the love of the people whom he had 
been serving. Though men could still feel bitterly on the sub- 
ject of religious differences, the new century was more generous 
than the old had been. Travel along the Atlantic seaboard and 
in Europe enriched his knowledge of the world, but only deep- 
ened his love of the home region ; and here as a full-grown man 
he settled down with his books and among an increasing circle 
of congenial friends to think about life and to record what he 
had thought. 

It was therefore no accident that in three successive years 
— 1836, 1837, and 1838 — Emerson made three statements in 
summary of his chief ideas on men and things. In all of 
them there was a central thought — that life had become t^o 
much a matter of unconsidered routine and that people must 
stop long enough to make up their minds what it was all 
about. He offered no " system." He pleaded only that people 
begin to think again, so that if they followed in the footsteps 
of their fathers they should do so with their eyes open, or 
if they decided to strike off into new paths they should not 
be blind men led by the blind. 

The first of the trio^ was the essay on "Nature," published 
as a slender little book in 1836. He opened with an appeal 

1 Found in the volume " Nature, Addresses and Lectures." 



204 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

for his readers to look at the wonders around them. " If the 
stars should appear but one night in a thousand years, how 
would men believe and adore ; and preserve for many genera- 
tions the remembrance of the city of God which had been 
shown." He went on to discuss nature as Commodity, or 
source of all the things man may use or own ; as Beauty, 
or source of delight to body, spirit, and mind ; as Language, 
or source of the images and comparisons by means of which 
man attempts to express abstract ideas ; and as a Discipline, 
or source of training to the intellect in understanding nature's 
laws and to the moral sense in obeying and interpreting 
them. In all these respects he contended that the man who 
will truly understand nature must combine the exactness of 
observation which belongs to science with the reverence 
of feeling which is the basis of religion. 

No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But 
when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal 
relations, and see it in the light of thought, shall, at the same time, 
kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go 
forth anew into the creation. ... So shall we come to look at the 
world with new eyes. . . . The kingdom of man over nature, which 
cometh not with observation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his 
dream of God, — he shall enter into without more wonder than the 
blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight. 

Such was Emerson's gospel of beauty. It did not attract any 
wide attention ; but across the sea it was hailed with admira- 
tion by Carlyle, who showed it to his friends, and it attracted 
the attention of Harvard College, so that Emerson was invited 
to speak before the Phi Beta Kappa society in the following 
summer. 

The result of this invitation was his famous address on 
"The American Scholar." It was an appeal this time for 
independence in the realm of the intellect. It has frequently 
been described as the American Declaration of Intellectual 
Independence ; and the comparison to Jefferson's document 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 205 

Stands in the fact that it did not contain a new idea in America, 
but that it stated memorably what had been uttered again and 
again by other Americans. " Our day of dependence, our 
long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws to 
a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, 
cannot always be fedt)n the sere remains of foreign harvests." 
To make his point, Emerson held that the American scholar 
must not continue to be "a delegated intellect " but must 
become Man Thinking. Unlike most of the later essays the 
address is clear and orderly in structure. After a brief intro- 
duction the scholar is discussed in terms of the chief influences 
which surround him. The first is nature, and this section is 
brief because of its full treatment in the essay of the preceding 
year. The second is the spirit of the past as it is best 
recorded in books. Emerson accepted without qualification 
the books which contain the story of history and the explana- 
tion of exact science. Yet, as science is ever advancing and 
the interpretations of history are continually changing, he 
might have said of these what he said of books which attempt 
to explain life : " Each age, it is found, must write its own 
books ; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. 
The books of an older period will not fit this." The third 
great influence on the scholar is participation in life. 

Only so much do I know as I have lived. ... If it were only for 
a vocabulary, the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our 
dictionary. Years are well spent in country labors ; in town ; in the 
insight into trades and manufactures ; in frank intercourse with many 
men and women ; in science ; in art ; to the one end of mastering in 
all their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody our 
perceptions. . . . Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we 
get tiles and copestones for the masonry of to-day. 

With these influences affecting him the scholar must perform 
his duties without thought of reward in money or praise. He 
must feel all confidence in himself. "' Let him not quit his 
belief that a popgun is a popgun, though the ancient and 



206 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

honorable of the earth affirm it to be the crack of doom." 
Signs of the interest that the scholar is showing in life 
(as a combination of all sorts of people with common interests 
but diverse fortunes) comfort Emerson. These will redeem 
scholarship. And so he concludes to the young college men : 

We will walk on our own feet ; we will work with our own hands ; 
we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no longer 
a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence. The dread of 
man and the love of man shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy 
around all. A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each 
believes himself inspired by the divine soul which also inspires all men. 

This address was inspiring to all who heard it. The young 
scholars went out with a new feeling for the dignity of learn- 
ing as an equipment toward leadership, and the older Harvard 
professors felt in Emerson's words some reward for a college 
that had helped to produce such a man as he. An immediate 
consequence of the address was a further invitation to speak 
the next year before the students of the Divinity School; and 
in 1838 he talked in a similar vein to the budding clergymen. 
This address in a way rounded out his "philosophy" by applying 
the rule of self-reliance to the third aspect of man's life ; after 
beauty in " Nature " and truth in " The American Scholar " 
came the moral sense in " The Divinity School Address." He 
started, as in the former two, with a kind of prose poem on 
the wonder of life. He went on to speak of the need of reli- 
gion that was fresh, vivid, and personal. Then he referred to 
the defects of "historical Christianity," which was his name 
for the church embodiment of Christ's teaching. These, in his 
opinion, were two : that modern Christianity was a system of 
belief very different from the simple teachings of Jesus and 
that this system was dangerous because it had become fixed. 
" Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long 
ago given and done, as if God were dead." The remedy for 
these defects was the same as for the deadened attitude toward 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 207 

Nature and Truth — that man should be self-rehant. To the 
young divinity student he declared, "Yourself a newborn bard 
of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint 
men at first hand with Deity." Christianity has given mankind 
two great gifts : the Sabbath and the institution of preaching. 

What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, 
in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation of men or your own occa- 
sions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience 
teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope 
and revelation ? 

Although the Harvard authorities might have foreseen that 
he would speak as frankly as this, they were shocked when he 
presumed to advocate independence in religion. Two hundred 
years earlier he would have been banished from Massachusetts 
for saying less. As it was, however. Harvard closed its lecture 
rooms to him for nearly thirty years, and the conservative 
clergy expressed their outraged feelings in speech and print. 
Emerson was undisturbed. To one of them, his friend the 
Reverend Henry Ware, he wrote a seldom-quoted letter that 
completely represents him. It deserves careful study. 

,, , ^. Concord, October 8, 1838. 

My dear Sir : — 

I ought sooner to have acknowledged your kind letter of last week, 
and the Sermon it accompanied. The latter was right manly and 
noble. The Sermon, too, I have read with great attention. If it 
assails any doctrines of mine — perhaps I am not so quick to see it 
as writers generally — certainly I did not feel any disposition to depart 
from my habitual contentment, that you should say your thought, 
whilst I say mine. 

I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It 
strikes me very oddly, that good and wise men at Cambridge and 
Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have 
always been — from my very incapacity of methodical writing — "a 
chartered libertine " free to worship and free to rail, — lucky when I 
could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to 
the institution and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters 



208 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of 
my position ; for I well know, that there is no scholar less willing or 
less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself, if chal- 
lenged. I could not possibly give you one of the " arguments " you 
cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not 
know what arguments mean, in reference to any expression of thought. 
I delight in telling what I think ; but if you ask me how I dare say 
so, or, why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not 
even see, that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that, 
in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly 
raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I 
advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to make 
good his thesis against all comers. 

I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other 
good men write, as I have always done, — glad when you speak my 
thoughts, and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go 
on, just as before, seeing whatever I can, and telling what I see ; 
and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me ; 
the joy of finding, that my abler and better brothers, who work with 
the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unex- 
pectedly confirm my perceptions, and find my nonsense is only their 
own thought in motley. 

And so I am, 

Your affectionate servant, 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

Thus far it is clear that Emerson's message to the worlcT 
"was almost unqualifiedly personal : an attempt to shake men 
out of their lazy ways of drifting with the current into active 
swimming — with the current if they thought best, but usually 
against it. The whole problem was summarized in his single 
defiant essay on " Self- Reliance, " ^ — defiant because in this 
protest he was almost entirely concerned with telling men what 
they should no^ do. They should not pray, not be consistent, 
not travel, not imitate, not conform to society ; but should be 
Godlike, independent, searching their own hearts, and behaving 
in accord with the truth they found there. It is an anarchy he 

1 " Self-Reliance " Essays, First Series. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 209 

was preaching, an elevated lawlessness. And the first reaction 
to such teaching is to ask with shocked disapproval, "What 
would happen to the world if all men followed his advice ? " 
There are two very simple answers. The first is that if all men 
followed Emerson's advice, completely as he gave it, the world 
would be peopled with saints, for what he asked was that men 
should disregard the laws of society only that they might better 
observe the laws of God. And the second answer is that such a 
query sets an impossible condition, for the pressure of custom 
is so strong and the human inclination to do as others do is so 
prevailing that counsel like Emerson's will never be adopted, 
at the most, by more than a very small and courageous minority. 
One fact to keep in mind in reading all Emerson is that 
he regularly expresses himself in emphatic terms. In conse- 
quence, what he says in one mood he is likely in another to 
gainsay, and in a third, though without any deliberate intention 
to defend himself, he may reconcile the apparent contradiction. 
He simply follows out his own ideas on consistency. 

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag 
about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you 
have stated in this or that public place ? Suppose you should contra- 
dict yourself ; what then ? . . . A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin 
of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 

This sort of balancing of his views of independence is to be 
found in an essay of thirty years later on " Society and Solitude." 
The first two thirds of this seem to be quite as unqualified as 
anything in the early declarations. He quotes Swedenborg : 
" There are angels who do not live consociated, but separate, 
house and house ; these dwell in the midst of heaven, because 
they are the best of angels." He says for himself : " We pray 
to be conventional. But the wary Heaven takes care you shall 
not be, if there is anything good in you." " We sit and muse, 
and are serene and complete ; but the moment we meet with 
anybody, each becomes a fraction." Then, however, comes the 



210 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

corrective note : "But this banishment to the rocks and echoes 
no metaphysics can make right or tolerable. This result is so 
against nature, such a half view, that it must be corrected by 
a common sense and experience." In the earlier essays and 
addresses Emerson had said repeatedly that a man's education 
could not be complete unless it included contact with people, 
and in this essay he came round to the reverse of the medal, 
that no man could fully express himself who was not useful to 
his fellows. "Society cannot do without cultivated men." This 
idea was, of course, always in Emerson's mind, but it was in 
the later years, after he himself had seen more and more of 
life, that he expressed it in definite assertions instead of taking 
it for granted as something the wise man would assume. The 
concluding paragraph in this essay not only sums up Emerson's 
views on society and solitude but illustrates the kind of balance 
which he often strikes between statements which little minds 
could erect into hobgoblins of inconsistency : 

Here again, as so often, Nature delights to put us between extreme 
antagonisms, and our safety is in the skill with which we keep the 
diagonal line. Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must 
keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions 
are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy. 
These wonderful horses need to be driven by fine hands. We require 
such a solitude as shall hold us to its revelations when we are in the 
street and in palaces ; for most men are cowed in society, and say 
good things to you in private, but will not stand to them in public. 
But let us not be the victims of words. Society and solitude are decep- 
tive names. It is not the circumstance of seeing more or fewer people, 
but the readiness of sympathy that imports; and a sound mind will 
derive its principles from insight, with ever a purer ascent to the 
sufficient and absolute right, and will accept society as the natural 
element in which they are to be applied. 

Throughout the most fruitful years of Emerson's life he 
lived quietly in Concord, writing without hurry in the morn- 
ings, walking and talking with his friends who lived there and 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 21 1 

with the increasing number of more and less distinguished men 
who came to receive his inspiration. But three winter months 
of each year he gave to lecturing, giving frequent series in 
New York and Boston and going out into the West as far as 
Wisconsin and Missouri. In these months, as a combined 
prophet and man of business, he earned a fair share of his 
income and exerted his widest influence. What he meant to 
his auditors has been best said by Lowell in his brief essay 
on " Emerson the Lecturer." Recalling the days when he 
was a college student, sixteen years younger than Emerson, 
Lowell wrote : 

We used to walk in from the country [Cambridge, four miles out 
from Boston] to the Masonic Temple (I think it was) through the 
crisp winter night, and listen to that thrilling voice of his, so charged 
with subtle meaning and subtle music, as shipwrecked men on a raft 
to the hail of a ship that came with unhoped-for food and rescue. . . . 
And who that saw the audience will ever forget it, where everyone 
still capable of fire, or longing to renew in himself the half-forgotten 
sense of it, was gathered ? . . . I hear again that rustle of sensation, 
as they turned to exchange glances over some pithier thought, some 
keener flash of that humor which always played about the horizon of 
his mind like heat-lightning. ... To some of us that long-past ex- 
perience remains as the most marvellous and fruitful we have ever 
had. . . . Did they say he was disconnected ? So were the stars, that 
seemed larger to our eyes, as we walked homeward with prouder stride 
over the creaking snow. And were not they knit together by a higher 
logic than our mere senses could master? Were we enthusiasts? 
I hope and believe we were, and am thankful to the man who made 
us worth something for once in our lives. If asked what was left? 
what we carried home? we should not have been careful for an 
answer. It would have been enough if we had said that something 
beautiful had passed that way. 

If people were puzzled to follow the drift of Emerson's 
lectures — and they often were — it was because most of them 
were so vague in outline. They literally did drift. There were 
two or three explanations for this defect. One was that 



212 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Emerson seldom set himself the task of "" composing " a com- 
plete essay. His method of writing was to put down in his 
morning hours at the desk the ideas that came to him. As 
thoughts on subjects dear to him flitted through his mind he 
captured some of them as they passed. These were related, — 
like the moon and the tides and the best times for digging 
clams, — but when he assembled various paragraphs into a lecture 
he took no pains to establish "theme coherence" by explaining 
the connections that were quite clear in his own mind. It hap- 
pened further, as the years went on, that in making up a new 
discourse he would select paragraphs from earlier manuscripts, 
relying on them to hang together with a confidence that was 
sometimes misplaced. And auditors of his lectures in the last 
years recall how, as he passed from one page to the next, a 
look of doubt and slight amusement would sometimes confess 
without apology to an utter lack of connection even between 
the parts of a sentence. 

In his sentences and his choice of words, however, there 
were perfect simplicity and clearness. Here is a passage to illus- 
trate, drawn by the simplest of methods — opening the first 
volume of Emerson at hand and taking the first paragraph. 
It happens to be in the essay on " Compensation." 

Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass. Commit a crime, 
and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals 
in the wood the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and 
mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe out the 
foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet 
or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws 
and substances of nature — water, snow, wind, gravitation — become 
penalties to the thief. 

In this passage of ninety words more than seventy are words 
of one syllable, and only one of the other eighteen — transpires 
— can baffle the reader or listener even for a moment. The 
general idea in Emerson's mind is expressed by a series of 
definite and picturesque comparisons. " Be sure your sin will 
find you out," he said. "You commit the wicked deed, creep. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 213 

dodge, run away, come to your hiding place, climb the ladder, 
and hope for escape. But nature or God — has laid a trap for 
you. Your footprints are on the new-fallen snow ; human eyes 
follow them to the tell-tale ladder leading to your window ; 
and you are caught. The laws of the universe have combined 
against you in the snowfall, the impress of your feet, and the 
weight of the ladder which you could not raise." 
' There is, perhaps, no great difference in the language used 
by Emerson and that in the paraphrase, but in the way the 
sentences are put together Emerson's method of composing 
is once more illustrated. Emerson suggests ; the paraphrase 
explains. Emerson assumes that the reader is alert and know- 
ing ; the paraphraser, that he is a little inattentive and a little 
dull. Lowell again has summed up the whole matter : "A dic- 
tion at once so rich and homely as his I know not where to 
match in these days of writing by the page ; it is like home- 
spun cloth-of-gold. The many cannot miss the meaning, and 
only the few can find it." This is another way of saying, 
" Anybody can understand him sentence by sentence, but the 
wiser the reader the more he can understand of the meaning 
as a whole." What is said of his prose applies in still greater 
degree to his poetry, as it does to all real poetry. 

About his poetry, however, because common agreement has 
made poetry so much more dependent upon form and structure 
than prose, there has been wide disagreement, swinging all the 
way from the strictures of Matthew Arnold to the unqualified 
praise of George Edward Woodberry. On the whole, a good 
deal of the argument has been beside the mark because it has 
been a condemnation of Emerson for writing in an unusual 
fashion rather than an appraisal of the actual value of his 
verse. In " Merlin " Emerson stated his poetic thesis and in 
a measure threw out his challenge : 

Thy trivial harp will never please 

Or fill my craving ear ; 

Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 

Free, peremptory, clear. 



214 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

No jingling serenader's art, 

Nor tinkle of piano strings, 

Can make the wild blood start 

In its mystic springs. 

The kingly bard 

Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 

As with hammer or with mace. . . . 

The natural result was that there is the closest of resem- 
blances between much of Emerson's verse and some of his most 
elevated prose. His prose frequently contains poetic flashes ; 
his verse not seldom is spirited prose both in form and sub- 
stance. In his Journal he sometimes wrote in prose form what 
with a very few changes he transcribed into verse, and in his 
essays there are many passages which are closely paralleled in 
his poems.^ They are the poems of a philosopher whose first 
concern is with truth and whose truth is all-embracing. Emerson 
wrote no narratives, no dramatic poems, no formal odes, almost 
no poems for special occasions, and when he did write such 
as the " Concord Hymn " he made the occasion radiate out 
into all time and space when the embattled farmers " fired the 
shot heard round the world." The utter compactness and 
simplicity of his verse made it at times not only rugged but 
difficult of understanding. " Brahma," which bewildered many 
of its first readers, is hard to understand only so long as one 
fails to realize that God is the speaker of the stanzas. The 
poems are like Bacon's essays in their meatiness and unadorn- 
ment. Had they been more strikingly different from the 
ordinary measures they would probably have been both blamed 

^ Such abstruse poems as the following are really expounded in corre- 
sponding essays : " Written in Naples " and " Written in Rome " — the essay 
on "History"; "Each and All" — the essay on "Compensation"; "The 
Problem" — the essays on "Art" and "Compensation"; "Merlin" — the 
essay on " The Poet " ; " The World-Soul " — the essays on " Nominalist and 
Realist "and "The Over-Soul"; " Hamatreya " — the essay on "Compensa- 
tion " ; " Musketaquid " — the essay on " Nature " ; " fitienne de la Boece " — 
the essay on " Friendship " ; " Brahma " — the essays on " Circles " and 
" The Over-Soul." 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 21 5 

and praised more widely. Few of his poems have passed intd 
wide currency, but many of his brief passages are quoted by 
speakers who have Httle idea as to their source. 

Not for all his faith can see 
Would I that cowled churchman be. 

Wrought in a sad sincerity. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
As the best gem upon her zone. 

... if eyes were made for seeing, 
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being. 

Oh, tenderly the haughty day 
Fills his blue urn with fire ! 

Those who are fortunate enough to have known him — he 
died in 1882 — all agree that the real Emerson can be known 
only in part through his printed pages. His life was after all 
his greatest work. He was serene, noble, dignified. His por- 
traits, at whatever age, testify to his fine loftiness. Every hearer 
speaks of the music of his voice. Withal he was friendly, full 
of humor, a good neighbor, a loyal townsman, and an engaging 
host to those who were worthy of his hospitality. Charles 
Eliot Norton, returning from Europe with him in 1873, when 
Emerson was sixty-nine years old, wrote in his journal : 
" Emerson was the greatest talker in the ship's company. 
He talked with all men, yet was fresh and zealous for talk at 
night. His serene sweetness, the pure whiteness of his soul, 
the reflection of his soul in his face, were never more apparent 
to me." No single quotation nor any group of them can make 
real to the young student that quiet refrain of reverent affection 
which is sounded in the recollections of scores and hundreds 
who knew him. 

This almost unparalleled beauty of character is the final 
guarantee of the line upon line of his poetry and the precept 
upon precept of his prose. What he taught must be understood 



2l6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

partly in the light of himself and partly in the light of the 
years in which he was teaching. Let us take, for example, 
his two chief contentions. First, his insistence that the truth 
can be found only by searching one's own mind and con- 
science. Testing this doctrine by an examination of the man 
who preached it, one sees that he inherited a power to think 
from generations of educated ancestry. He had an " inquiring 
mind " and an inclination to use it. Furthermore, he inherited 
from this same ancestry a complete balance of character. He 
did not tend to selfishness or self-indulgence, and was free 
from thinking that the "voice of God" counseled him to 
ignoble courses. Puritan restraint was so ingrained in him 
that he needed no outward discipline and did not see the 
need of it for others. Freedom for him was always liberty 
under the law of right ; and this freedom he championed 
in a period and among a people who for two centuries had 
been accepting without thought what the clergy had been tell- 
ing them to believe. It had been for them to do what they 
were told, rather than to think what they should do. Now in 
Emerson's day there was a general restlessness. The domina- 
tion of the old church was relaxed, and all sorts of new creeds 
were being propounded. The theory of democratic government 
was on trial, and no man was quite certain of its outcome. 
The expansion of Western territory and the development of 
the factory system were making many quick fortunes and 
creating discontent with quiet and settled frugality. Men 
needed to be told to keep their heads, to combine wisely 
between the old and the new, and to accept no man's judg- 
ment but their own. The "standpatter" would be left hope- 
lessly behind the current of human thought ; the wild enthusiast 
would just as certainly run on a snag or be cast up on 
the shore. 

This led to the second of Emerson's leading ideas — that a 
man should not be "warped clean out of his own orbit." 
Reasoning from the evident working of a natural law in the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 217 

universe, he was convinced that there was a spiritual law which 
controlled human affairs. He was certain that in the end all 
would be well with the world. It was his duty and every 
other man's to be virtuous and to encourage virtue, but as the 
times were " in God's hand " no man need actively fight the 
forces of evil. It was the " manifest destiny " theory cropping 
out again, a belief easy to foster in a new country like America, 
where wickedness could be explained on the ground that in 
a period of national youth temporary mistakes were sure to be 
committed, — and equally sure to be rectified. "My whole 
philosophy," he said, " is compounded of acquiescence and 
optimism." Hence there was more of sympathy than coopera- 
tion in Emerson's attitude toward life. Like Matthew Arnold 
in these same years, he distrusted all machinery, even the 
" machinery " of social reform. 

To some of his younger friends, and particularly to those who 
were more familiar than he with the unhappy conditions in 
the older European nations, Emerson's " acquiescence and opti- 
mism " seemed wholly mistaken. We may return to Norton's 
comment (p. 215), which was unfairly interrupted: " But never 
before in intercourse with him had I been so impressed with 
the limits of his mind. ... His optimism becomes a bigotry, 
and though of a nobler type than the common American con- 
ceit of the preeminent excellence of American things as they 
are, had hardly less of the quality of fatalism. To him this is 
the best of all possible worlds, and the best of all possible times. 
He refuses to believe in disorder or evil." This comment is 
not utterly fair to Emerson, but it represents the view of the 
practical idealist who feels that for all Emerson's insistence 
on the value of learning from life, he had drawn more from 
solitude than from society. One may quote with caution what 
the pragmatic Andrew D. White said of Tolstoi : 

He has had little opportunity to take part in any real discussion of 
leading topics ; and the result is that his opinions have been developed 
without modification by any rational interchange of thought with other 



21 8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

men. Under such circumstances any man, no matter how noble or 
gifted, having given birth to striking ideas, coddles and pets them 
until they become the full-grown, spoiled children of his brain. He can 
see neither spot nor blemish in them, and comes virtually to believe 
himself infallible. 

Those who most admire Emerson to-day have perhaps as 
much optimism as he but very much less acquiescence. For 
certain vital things have happened since he did his work. 
Time, — Emerson's " little gray man," — who could perform the 
miracle of continual change in life, has done nothing more 
miraculous than making men share the burden of creating 
a better world. Millions are now trying to follow Emerson's 
instruction to retain their independence and not to lose their 
sympathy, but they are going farther than he in expressing 
their sympathy by work. They are fighting every sort of 
social abuse, as Emerson's Puritan ancestors fought the devil; 
they are adopting Emerson's principles and Bryant's tactics ; 
they are subscribing to Whittier's line : 

O prayer and action, ye are one. 

BOOK LIST 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. Centenary Edition. The Complete Works of 
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1 903-1 904. 12 vols. Uncollected Writings. 
Essays, Addresses, Poems, Reviews, and Letters, by Ralph Waldo 
Emerson. 191 2. The chief works appeared in book form originally 
as follows: Nature, 1836; The American Scholar, 1837; An Address 
delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, 
1838; Essays, 1841; Essays, Second Series, 1844; Poems, 1847; 
Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, 1849; Representative Men, 1850; 
English Traits, 1856; The Conduct of Life, i860; May-Day and 
Other Pieces, 1867; Society and Solitude, 1870; Letters and Social 
Aims, 1876; The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, 1883; Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1884; 
Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers, 1893; Journals of 
Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations, 1909-1914. 
Bibliography 

A volume compiled by G. W. Cooke. 1908. Cambridge History of 
American Literature, Vol. I, pp. 551-566. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 219 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by James Elliot Cabot. A Memoir of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. 1887. 2 vols. 

BoYNTON, Percy H. Democracy in Emerson's Journals. New Re- 
public, Vol. I, No. 4, pp. 25-26. 

BoYNTON, Percy H. Emerson's Feeling toward Reform. New Re- 
public, Vol. I, No. 13, pp. 16-18. 

BoYNTON, Percy H. Emerson's Solitude. New Republic, Vol. Ill, 
pp. 68-70. 

Brownell, William C. Emerson, in American Prose Masters. 1909. 

Burroughs, John. Emerson. Birds and Poets. 1877. 

Chapman, J. J. Emerson, Sixty Years After, in Emerson and Other 
Essays. 1898. 

Concord School of Philosophy. The Genius and Character of Emer- 
son. Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy. F. B. 
Sanborn, editor. 1885. 

Emerson, Edward Waldo. Emerson in Concord. A Memoir. 1889. 

Firkins, O. W. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 191 5. 

Garnett, Richard. Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1888. 

HiGGiNSON, T. W. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Contemporaries. 1899. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1885. {A.M.L. 
Ser.) 

James, Henry. Emerson. Partial Portraits. 1888. 

Lowell, J. R. Mr. Emerson's New Course of Lectures, in My Study 
Windows. 1871. 

Maeterlinck, Maurice. Emerson, in Sept Essais d^Emerson. 1894. 

More, Paul Elmer. The Influence of Emerson, in Shelbume Essays. 
Ser. I. 1904. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. I, 
Bk. II, chap. ix. 

Payne, W. M. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Leading American Essayists. 
1910. 

Sanborn, F. B. Ralph Waldo Emerson. (Beacon Biographies.) 1901. 

Sanborn, F. B. The Personality of Emerson. 1903. 

Stedman, E. C. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Poets of America. 1885. 

Stephen, Leslie. Emerson, in Studies of a Biographer. Ser. 2. 1902. 

Whipple, E. P. Recollections of Eminent Men and Other Papers. 
1887. 

Willis, N. P. Emerson. Second Look at Emerson, in ^«?77-6^ra/^j-. 
1851. 

WooDBERRY, G. E. Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1907. {E.M.L.Ser.) 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the introductions and conclusions of the essays of 1836, 
1837, and 1838 and note the poetical setting into which the essays 
are cast. With these in mind read the foregoing comments on 
Emerson's poetry (pp. 213-215). 



220 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Compare the Emerson and Lowell essays on Shakespeare. 

Compare any corresponding sections in Emerson's " Representative 
Men " and Carlyle's " Heroes and Hero Worship." 

Read Emerson's " English Traits " and Hawthorne's " Our Old 
Home " for a comparison in the points of view of the two Americans. 

Read any two or three essays for the nature element in them, 
the kind of things alluded to, and the kind of significances derived 
from them. 

Read any one or two essays for Emerson's allusions to science and 
to the sciences, the kinds of allusions made, and the kind of signifi- 
cances derived from them. 

Follow the footnote on page 214 for a comparison of Emerson's 
treatments of the same theme in prose and verse. Read also his 
poem " Threnody " and the corresponding passage in the Journal for 
the winter of 1842. 

Read the essay on Goethe and see whether in Emerson's judg- 
ment of Goethe as a German national character he agrees with or 
dissents from the judgment of the twentieth century. Compare with 
Santayana's estimate of Goethe in " Three Philosophical Poets." 

A sense of the ecclesiastical and theological unrest in Emerson's 
day can be secured through the reading of Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown 
Folks," Charles Kingsley's " Yeast," Anthony Trollope's " Barchester 
Towers " ; or in poetry, in the poems of doubt of Arnold and Clough 
and Tennyson's " In Memoriam." 

Read " The American Scholar " with reference to the three influ- 
ences surrounding the scholar, and then read Wells's " The Education 
of Joan and Peter." Are there any points in common.? Compare 
the section on Beauty in Emerson's " Nature " and Poe's discussion 
of beauty in " The Poetic Principle " and " The Philosophy of 
Composition." 



CHAPTER XV 
HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

Henry D. Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 
1817. His grandfather, John Thoreau, a Frenchman, had 
crossed to America in 1773 and had married a woman of Scotch 
birth in 1781. His mother came from a Connecticut family 
of much earher settlement in America, but his more striking 
traits seem to have passed to him from the father's side. He 
was a normal, out-of-door, fun-loving boy, though with more 
than average fondness for books. At Harvard, where he was a 
graduate in 1837, he was able but unconventional. He was more 
or less out of patience with the narrow limits of the course of 
study and the spirit of rivalry among the boys which made them 
work quite as much for class ranking as for the value of what 
they learned. Toward the end of senior year this contempt for 
college honors came to a head. He had been ill, and on his 
return, as the wise President Quincy put it, revealed " some 
notions concerning emulation and college rank, which had a 
natural tendency to diminish his zeal, if not his exertions." 
When the faculty resented this, even to the extent of planning 
to withdraw scholarship support, the president took up his 
cause and backed him for his character rather than for his 
performance. It was appropriate that Emerson should have 
written in his young townsman's behalf, for his own experience 
had not been altogether different. 

" The story of Thoreau's remaining years is quickly told. He 
lived, unmarried, a kind of care-free, independent life that in an 
uneducated laboring man would be called shiftless. Many of his 
townsmen disapproved of his eccentricities — his brusque man- 
ners, abrupt speech, and radical opinions, and his unwillingness 



I 



222 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to work for money unless he had an immediate need for it. 
Yet he was less irregular than he was reputed to be. From 
1838 to 1 84 1 he conducted a very successful school in Concord 
with his brother John, giving it up only with the failure of 
John's health, and — in spite of Emerson's statement to the 
contrary — he had throughout his life a hand in the family 
business first of pencil-making and later of preparing fine plum- 
bago for electrotyping. However, he was not an ordinary routine 
man. Like Crevecoeur, whom he variously suggests, he was a 
surveyor and a handy man with all sorts of tools. Ten years 
after graduation he wrote to the secretary of his college class : 

I don't know whether mine is a profession, or a trade, or what not 

I am a schoolmaster, a private Tutor, a Surveyor, a Gardener, a 
Fanner, a Painter (I mean a House Painter), a Carpenter, a Mason, 
a Day-laborer, a Pencil-maker, a Glass-paper-maker, a Writer, and 
sometimes a Poetaster. 

So as he was able to turn an honest penny whenever he needed 
one, and as his needs were few, he worked at intervals and 
betweenwhiles shocked many of his industrious townsfolk by 
spending long days talking with his neighbors, studying the 
ways of plants and animals in the near-by woods and waters, 
and occasionally leaving the village for trips to the wilds of 
Canada, to the Maine woods, to Cape Cod, to Connecticut, and, 
once or twice on business, to New York City. After college 
he became a devoted disciple and friend of Emerson. From 
the outset Emerson delighted in his " free and erect mind, 
which was capable of making an else solitary afternoon sunny 
with his simplicity and clear perception." They differed as 
good friends should, Emerson acquiescing in laws and practices 
which he could not approve, and Thoreau defying them. The 
stock illustration is on the issue of tax-pajdng. Emerson, as a 
property-holder, paid about two hundred dollars and refused to 
protest at what was probably an undue assessment. Thoreau, 
outraged at the national policy in connection with the Mexican 




A LITERARY MAP OF CONCORD 



224 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

War, refused on principle to pay his few dollars for poll tax 
and had to be shut up by his good friend, Sam Staples, col- 
lector, deputy sheriff, and jailer, who tried in vain to lend him 
the money. Emerson visited him at the jail, where ensued the 
historic exchange of questions : " Henry, why are you here ? " 
" Waldo, why are you not here ? " 

The records of the rambles of the two men are many. In his 
memorial essay on Thoreau, Emerson wrote : 

It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the 
country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths 
of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and 

what creature had taken this path before him On the day I speak 

of he looked for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and 
on examination of its florets, decided it had been in flower five days. 

Emerson's records after walks with Thoreau are full of 
wood lore. He may have recognized the plants himself, but 
he seldom recorded them except when he had been with his 
more expert friend. 

In 1839 Thoreau, in company with his brother, spent "A 
Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers," from which he 
drew the material published ten years later in a volume with 
that title. It is a meandering record of the things he saw during 
the seven days and the thoughts suggested by them. In his 
lifetime the book was so complete a commercial failure that after 
some years he took back seven hundred of the thousand copies 
printed. In the meanwhile, from 1845 to 1847, he indulged 
in his best-known experience — his "hermitage" at Walden 
Pond, a little way out from Concord. This gave him the sub- 
ject matter for his most famous book, " Walden," published in 
1854 and much more successful in point of sales. These two 
volumes, together with a few prose essays and a modest number 
of poems, were all that was given to the public during his life- 
time. Since his death a large amount of the manuscript he left 
has been published, as shown in the list at the end of this chapter. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 225 

"Walden " is externally an account of the two years and two 
months of his residence at the lakeside, but it is really, like his 
sojourn there, a commentary and criticism on life. In the chap- 
ter on " Where I lived and What I lived for " he wrote : 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front 
only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it 
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not 
lived. ... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, 
to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not 
life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, 
and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why 
then, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its 
meanness to the world ; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, 
and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. 

The actual report of his days by the lakeside can be separated 
from his decision as to what they were worth. He went out 
near the end of March, 1845, to a piece of land owned by 
Emerson on the shore of the pond. He cut his own timber, 
bought a laborer's shanty for the boards and nails, during the 
summer put up a brick chimney, and counting sundry minor 
expenses secured a tight and dry — and very homely — four 
walls and ceiling for a total cost of ^28. 12^, Fuel he was able 
to cut. Food he largely raised. His clothing bill was slight. 
So that his account for the first year runs as follows : 

House $28.12^ 

Farm, one year 14-72^ 

Food, eight months 8.74 

Clothing, etc., eight months .... 8.4of 

Oil, etc., eight months 2.00 

$61.99! 

To offset these expenses he recorded : 

Farm produce sold $23.44 

Earned by day labor ...... 13.34 

$36:78 



226 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

leaving |525,2i|, which was about the cash in hand with 
which he started. The expense of the second year did not, 
of course, include the heaviest of the first-year items — the 
cost of the house. 

I learned from my two years' experience that it would cost incredibly 
little trouble to obtain one's necessary food, even in this latitude. . . . 
In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to main- 
tain oneself on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will 
live simply and wisely ; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still 
the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should 
earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier 
than I do. 

So much for the external account of the Walden years. The 
last words of the quotation give a cue to the criticism with 
which he accompanies the bare statement. This is contained 
chiefly in chapters I, " Economy " (the longest, amounting to 
one fourth of the book) ; II, "" Where I lived and What I lived 
for"; V, "Solitude"; VIII, "The Village"; and XVIII, "Con- 
clusion." He contended that life had been made complex and 
burdensome because of the mistaken notion that property was 
much to be desired. This idea had led men to buy land and 
build houses, go into trade, construct railways and ships, and to 
set up government and rival governments, in order to protect 
the things men owned and those they were buying and selling. 
Being who he was, he asserted boldly and sometimes savagely 
a large number of charges against organized society and the 
men who submitted to it. "' The laboring man has not leisure 
for a true integrity." " The civilized man's pursuits are not 
worthier than the savage's." " The college student obtains an 
ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself." " Thank 
God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture 
warehouse." "Men say a stitch in time saves nine, so they 
take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow." " Society 
is commonly too cheap." " Wherever a man goes, men will 
pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 227 

can, constrain him to belong to their desperate, odd-fellow 
society." At this point he challenges comparison again with 
Crevecoeur (see p, 60). To the hearty immigrant of the eight- 
eenth century the common right to own the soil and to enjoy 
the fruits of labor seemed almost millennial in view of the Old 
World conditions which denied these privileges to the masses. 
To the New England townsman the ownership of property was 
oppressive in view of the aboriginal right to traverse field and 
forest without any obligation to maintain an establishment or 
"improve" an acreage. In Cr^vecoeur's France, where for cen- 
turies the people had lived on sufferance, tenure of the land 
seemed an inestimable privilege. Thoreau's America seemed 
so illimitable that he apparently supposed land would always be 
" dirt cheap." Yet though one prized property and the other 
despised it, they were alike in not foreseeing the economic 
changes that the nineteenth century was to produce. 

The more positive side of Thoreau's criticism lies in the 
passages in which he told how excellent was his way of living, 
how full of freedom and leisure and how blest with solitude. 
There is no question that he did live cheaply, easily, happily, 
and independently, nor is there any question that the love of 
money and what it represents has made life more of a burden 
than a joy for millions of people ; but there is this immense 
difference between the independence of Thoreau and the inde- 
pendence of Emerson — that Emerson discharged his duties 
in the family and in the state and that Thoreau protested at 
his obligations to the group even while he was reaping the 
benefits of other men's industry. At Walden he lived on land 
owned by Emerson, who bought it and paid the taxes on it. 
The bricks and glass and nails in his shanty and the tools he 
borrowed to build it with were the products of mines and 
factories and kilns brought to him on the railroads and handled 
by the shopkeepers whom he scorned. He was therefore in 
the ungraceful position of being a beneficiary of society while 
he was carrying on a kind of guerrilla warfare against it. 



228 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

As a citizen and as a critic of society Thoreau lacked the 
sturdy Puritan conscience which is the bone and sinew of 
Emerson's character, and he lacked the " high seriousness " 
of his greater townsman. In consequence, instead of being 
serenely self-reliant he was often petulant ; and instead of 
being nobly dignified he was nervously on guard against 
deserved rebuke. Emerson frequently uttered and wrote 
striking sentences which surprise one into pleased attention. 
Thoreau came out with smart and clever sayings like an eager 
and half -naughty boy who is trying to shock his elders. 
Almost the only rejoinder that his protests called forth must 
have been disturbing to him, because Oliver Wendell Holmes 
was so unruffled as he wrote his " Contentment." 

" This is an interesting argument from a well-meaning 
young man," Holmes seems to have said : 

Little / ask, my wants are few ; 

and then in playful satire he told about the hut — of stone — 
on Beacon Street that fronts the sun, where he too could 
live content with a well-set table, the best of clothes, furniture, 
jewelry, paintings, and a fast horse when he chose to take an 
airing. This was the attitude of many good-humored men and 
women of the world who were inclined to smile indulgently 
at whatever came out of Concord. 

However, a fair estimate of Thoreau and his case against the 
world should steer the wise course between taking him too 
seriously and literally and not taking him seriously at all, 
between Stevenson's scathing attack in " Familiar Portraits " 
and Holmes's supercilious " Contentment." If one elects to 
act as a prosecuting attorney, one can say of him what Thoreau 
quotes a friend as saying of Carlyle, that he "is so ready to 
obey his humour that he makes the least vestige of truth the 
foundation of any superstructure, not keeping faith with his 
better genius nor truest readers." But if one choose to value 
him as a friend might, one can exonerate him in the light of 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 229 

a warning and a confession of his own : "I trust that you 
reahze what an exaggerator I am, — that I lay myself out to 
exaggerate whenever I have an opportunity, — pile Pelion 
upon Ossa, to reach heaven so." This is the very point of 
his title-page inscription to '" Walden " : "I do not propose 
to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chan- 
ticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake 
my neighbors up." It is easy to compare Emerson and 
Thoreau to the disadvantage of the younger man. But at one 
point they were quite alike, and that is in the fact that both 
were more social in their lives than in their writings. Thoreau 
was not an unmitigated anarchist, or hermit, or loafer. He was 
more capable and industrious than he admits ; he was devoted 
to his family and a loyal friend. In his protest at the ways 
of the world he was, in a manner, "whistling to keep his 
courage up," and often his whistling became rather shrill. 
The greater part of " Walden" and, indeed, of his writing 
as a whole is the work of a naturalist — the work included in 
such chapters as "Sounds," "The Ponds," "Brute Neigh- 
bors," "Former Inhabitants," and "Winter Visitors," "Win- 
ter Animals," and " The Pond in Winter." In the two 
generations since Crevecoeur's " Letters from an American 
Farmer" no one on this side the Atlantic had written about 
the out of doors with such fullness and intimate knowledge. 
In this respect, moreover, Thoreau, instead of being a student 
or imitator of Emerson, was his guide and instructor. Although 
modern science owes little to him and has corrected many of 
his findings, it recalls his help to Agassiz in collecting speci- 
mens ; and modern literature has produced only one or two 
men, like John Burroughs and John Muir, who write of nature 
with the same sympathy and beauty. The title of his friend 
Channing's book " Thoreau : the Poet-Naturalist " tells the 
whole story. He was fascinated by growing things. He could 
not learn enough about their ways. The life in Concord's rivers, 
ponds, fields, and woods by day and night and during the 



230 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

changing seasons was an endless study and pleasure. In his 
journal he kept a detailed record of the pageant of the year, 
which after his death was assembled in the four volumes 
" Spring in Massachusetts," " Summer," " Autumn," and 
'" Winter." When he went to other parts of the country he 
carried his knowledge of Concord as a sort of reference book. 
From Staten Island he wrote : " The woods are now full of a 
large honeysuckle in full bloom, which differs from ours. . . . 
Things are very forward here compared with Concord." In 
the Maine woods he recognized his old familiars but in more 
massively primitive surroundings than those at home. The 
sandy aridity of Cape Cod furnished him daily with fascinating 
contrasts, in natural surroundings and in their effect on the 
residents. On his trip to Mount Washington he found forty- 
two of the forty-six plants he expected, adding one to his list 
when, after falling and spraining his ankle, he limped a few 
steps and said, "Here is the arnica, anyhow," reaching for an 
arnica mollis, which he had not found before. And when he 
chose to put into essay form some of the information he had 
gleaned, he was exact without being technical and never for 
long repressed his lively spirits. 

The poet in him brought him back continually to the beauty 
in what he saw. He did not particularly incline to philosophize 
about creation like Emerson, the sheer facts of it meant so 
much more to him. Nor did he care to expound the beauties 
of nature ; he simply held them up to view. Take, for example, 
this bit from " The Pond in Winter," in which the last twelve 
words are quite as beautiful as the thing they describe : 

Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the 
hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of 
ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I 
look down into the quiet parlor of fishes, pervaded by a softened 
light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded 
floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity 
reigns as in the amber, twilight sky. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 231 

Or, again, this prose poem quoted in Channing's book: 

One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did by degrees 
approach as if to take some morsel from our hands, while our hearts 
leaped to our mouths with expectation and delight. She by degrees 
drew near with her fair limbs (progressive), making pretence of 
browsing ; nearer and nearer, till there was wafted to us the bovine 
fragrance, — cream of all the dairies that ever were or will be : and 
then she raised her gentle muzzle toward us, and snuffed an honest 
recognition within hand's reach. I saw it was possible for his herd to 
inspire with love the herdsman. She was as delicately featured as a 
hind. Her hide was mingled white and fawn-color, and on her 
muzzle's tip there was a white spot not bigger than a daisy ; and on 
her side turned toward me, the map of Asia plain to see. 

The following passages fulfill the main tenets of the con- 
temporary Imagists : 

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, 
or than Walden pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I 
pray .''... I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a 
pasture, or a bean-leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumble-bee. I am 
no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weather-cock, or the north 
star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the 
first spider in a new house. 

The wind has gently murmured through the blinds, or puffed with 
feathery softness against the windows, and occasionally sighed like a 
summer zephyr, lifting the leaves along, the livelong night. The 
meadow-mouse has slept in his snug gallery in the sod, the owl has 
sat in a hollow tree in the depth of the swamp ; the rabbit, the squirrel 
and the fox have all be enhoused. The watch-dog has lain quiet on 
the hearth, and the cattle have stood silent in their stalls. . . . But 
while the earth has slumbered, all the air has been alive with feathery 
flakes descending, as if some northern Ceres reigned, showering her 
silvery grain over all the fields. 

No yard; but unfenced Nature reaching to your very sills. A 
young forest growing up under your windows, and wild sumachs and 
blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar ; sturdy pitch-pines 
rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their 



232 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind 
blown off in the gale, — a pine tree torn up by the roots behind your 
house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great 
Snow, — no gate — no front yard,, and no path to the civilized world. 

His manner of writing was so like Emerson's that the com- 
ments on the style of the elder man (see pp. 212-215) apply 
for the most part to that of the younger. 

From the year of " Walden's " appearance to the end of 
Thoreau's life, in 1862, three matters are specially worthy of 
record. The first is that recognition began at last to come. 
This probably did not hasten his writing, but it released some 
of the great accumulation of manuscript in his possession. 
Several of the magazines accepted his papers, notably The 
Atlantic Monthly, which took eight of his articles, although 
seven of them were not published until the two years just 
after his death. The second is his eager friendship for two of 
the most strikingly unconventional men of his day — Walt 
Whitman and John Brown " of Harper's Ferry." Of Whit- 
man he wrote, when few were reading him and few of these 
approving : 

I have just read his second edition (which he gave me), and it has 
done me more good than any reading for a long time. ... I have 
found his poems exhilarating, encouraging. . . . We ought to rejoice 
greatly in him. He occasionally suggests something a little more 
than human. You can't confound him with the other inhabitants of 
Brooklyn or New York. How they must shudder when they read 
him ! . . . Since I have seen him, I find I am not disturbed by any 
brag or egoism in his book. He may turn out the least of a braggart 
of all, having a better right to be confident. 

John Brown he had met in Concord only a few weeks 
before the Harper's Ferry raid. Two weeks after the capture 
of Brown he delivered an address on the issues, first in Con- 
cord and later in Worcester and in Boston, defying his friends 
who advised him to silence. And after the execution of the 
old Kansan he arranged funeral services in Concord. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 233 

It turns what sweetness I have to gall, to hear, or hear of, the 
remarks of some of my neighbors. When we heard at first that he 
was dead, one of my townsmen observed that " he died as the fool 
dieth " ; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him 
dying to my neighbor living. . . . This event advertises me that there 
is such a fact as death, — the possibility of a man's dying. It seems 
? as if no man had ever lived before ; for in order to die you must first 
have lived. ... I hear a good many pretend that they are going to 
die ; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense I I '11 
defy them to do it. They have n't got life enough in them. They '11 
deliquesce like fungi; and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the 
spot where they left off. Only a half a dozen or so have died since 
the world began. 

The final fact of these later years is the breakdown of his 
own health. In spite of the moderation and sanity of his 
out-of-door habits his strength began to fail him before he had 
reached what should be the prime of life. From the ages of 
thirty-eight to forty he had to exercise the greatest care, 
avoiding any heavy exertion. A severe cold caught in i860 
developed soon into consumption, which carried him off in 
the spring of 1862 at the age of forty-five 

BOOK LIST 

Henry David Thoreau. Works. The Riverside Edition. 1894. 
10 vols. Walden Edition. 1906. 20 vols. (Of these volumes the last 
fourteen are the complete Journal, which includes in its original form 
what stands in Vols. V-VIII of the Riverside Edition, as Early Spring 
in Massachusetts, Summer, Autumn, Winter.) His works appeared in 
book form originally as follows : A Week on the Concord and Merri- 
mack Rivers, 1849; Walden, 1854; Excursions, 1863; The Maine 
Woods, 1864; Cape Cod, 1865; Letters to Various Persons, 1865; 
A Yankee in Canada, 1866; Early Spring in Massachusetts, 1881; 
Summer, 1884; Winter, 1888; Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers, 
1890; Essays and Other Writings, i8gi; Autumn, 1892; Miscel- 
lanies, 1893; Familiar Letters, 1894; Poems, 1895. 

Bibliography 

A volume compiled by Francis H. Allen. 1908. Also Cambridge 
History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 411-415. 



I 



234 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard Ufe is by Frank B. Sanborn. 1917. 

Benton, Joel. The Poetry of Thoreau. LippincoWs, May, 1886. 

Burroughs, John. Indoor Studies. 1889. 

Channing, W. E. Thoreau, the Poet-Naturahst. 1873. 

Emerson, R. W. Lectures and Biographical Sketches. Centenary 
Edition. 1903. 

FoERSTER, Norman. Humanism of Thoreau. Nation, Vol. CV, 
pp. 9-12. 

Lowell, J. R. My Study Windows. 1871. 

MacMechan, Archibald. Cambridge History of American Litera- 
ture, Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. x. 

Marble, A. R. Thoreau : his Home, Friends, and Books. 1902. 

More, P. E. Shelburne Essays. Ser. i. 1904. 

Pattee, F. L. American Literature since 1870, chap, viii, sec. i. 1915. 

Richardson, C. F. American Literature, Vol. I. 1887. 

Salt, H. S. Life of Thoreau. 1890. 

Salt, H. S. Literary Sketches. 1888. 

Sanborn, F. B. Life of Thoreau. 1882. {A.M.L. Ser.) 

Sanborn, F. B. Personality of Thoreau. 1901. 

Stevenson, R. L. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 1882. 

ToRREY, Bradford. Friends on the Shelf. 1906. 

Trent, W. P. American Literature. 1903. 

Van Doren, Mark. Henry David Thoreau : a Critical Study. 1916. 

Pertaining to Thoreau. S. A. Jones, editor. 1901. (Contains ten 
reprinted magazine articles on Thoreau.) 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read Emerson's " Woodnotes," Vol. I, pp. 2 and 3, for a passage 
which admirably characterizes Thoreau, though it is said to have been 
written without specific regard to him. 

Read " A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," noting 
chiefly either the passages on literature and men of letters or the 
passages of a sociological interest. Is there a connecting unity in 
these passages? 

Read " Economy " in " Walden " and the second and third of 
Crbvecoeur's " Letters from an American Farmer " for the contrast 
in ideas on property or for the contrast in ideas on the privileges 
and the obligations of citizenship. 

Read in "Walden" or "The Maine Woods" or "Cape Cod" 
or " A Yankee in Canada " or " Excursions " for examples of 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 235 

exaggeration and of aggressive self-consciousness. Is there any real 
likeness between Thoreau and Whitman in these respects ? 

Read the characterizations of Thoreau in the essays by Robert 
Louis Stevenson and James Russell Lowell and decide in which 
points they should be modified. 

Read any one or two essays for Thoreau's allusions to science 
and to the sciences, the kind of allusions made, and the kind of 
significances derived from them. 

Read any two or three essays for the nature element in them, 
f*| the kind of things alluded to, and the kind of significances derived 
}^ from them. 



CHAPTER XVI 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

The thought of Hawthorne (1804- 1864) as a mem ber of the 
"Concord group" should be rtiade with a mental re servation . 
He did not belong to Concord in any literal or figurative sense, 
he was not an intimate of those who did, he lived there for only 
seven years at two different periods in his career, and, wherever 
he lived, he was in thought and conduct anything but a group 
man. Yet he was a resident there for the first three years 
after his marriage (i 842-1 846), and he developed enough 
of a liking for the town to return to it for the closing four 
years of his life. What the town was by tradition and what 
it had become through Emerson's influence made it the most 
congenial spot in America for Hawthorne. 

On the other hand, he lived far longer in Salem — all but 
twelve out of his first forty-six years — and he belonged to 
the town of his heritage both far more and far less. Through 
instinctive feelings which were quite beyond his control he 
belonged to Salem from the bottom of his heart. 

This old town of Salem — my native place, though I have dwelt 
much away from it, both in boyhood and maturer years — possesses, 
or did possess, a hold on my affections, the force of which I have 
never realized during my seasons of actual residence here. . . . And 
yet, though invariably happiest elsewhere, there is within me a feeling 
for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to 
call affection. The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and 
aged roots which my family has struck into the soil. It is now nearly 
two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest 
emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest- 
bordered settlement, which has since become a city. And here his 
descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthy 

236 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 237 

substance with the soil; until no small portion of it must neces- 
sarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I 
walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak of 
is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. Few of my country- 
men can know what it is ; nor, as frequent transplantation is perhaps 
better for the stock, need they consider it desirable to know. 

Yet, strong as this unreasoned feeling was, to his mind 
the traditions of Salem were repellent, and it offered him no 
attractions as a place to live in. 

But the sentiment has likewise its moral quality. The figure of 
that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky 
grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination, as far back as I can 
remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home feeling for 
the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase 
of the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here 
on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned 
progenitor . . . than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my 
face hardly known. He was a soldier, legislator, judge ; he was a ruler 
in the Church ; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. 
He was likewise a better persecutor. . . . His son, too, inherited the 
persecuting spirit. ... I know not whether these ancestors of mine 
bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of heaven for their 
cruelties ; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy conse- 
quences of them, in another state of being. At all events, I, the pres- 
ent writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for 
their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them — as I have 
heard, and as the dreary and unprosperous condition of the race, for 
many a long year back, would argue to exists may be now and 
henceforth removed. 

On this side Hawthorne's attitude toward Salem — but really 
toward New England and all America — was like that of a man 
who has inherited debts of honor which he feels bound to dis- 
charge, though he never would have incurred them himself. 

Hawthorne was born in this town of his affection and his 
distrust on the Fourth of July, 1804. When he was four 
years old his father, a shipmaster, died during a foreign 



238 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

voyage. The sobering effect of this loss was increased by the 
way in which Mrs. Hawthorne solemnized it, for she dedi- 
cated her life to mourning, not only withdrawing from the 
outer world but even taking all her meals apart from her little 
daughters and her son. An accident to the boy when he was 
nine years old robbed him of healthy companionship with 
playmates by keeping him out of active sports for the next 
three years. So he developed, a bookish child in a muffled 
household. At this time he was reading Shakespeare, Milton, 
and the eighteenth-century poets ; later he was to transfer 
allegiance to the romantic novelists. In his fifteenth year the 
family lived together for several months at Raymond, Maine, a 
"town" of a half-dozen houses on the shore of Sebago Lake. 
" There," he told his publisher, James T. Fields, late in life, 
" I lived . . . like a bird of the air, so perfect was the freedom 
I enjoyed. But it was there I first got my cursed habits of 
solitude." The need of proper tutoring for college preparation 
caused his reluctant return to Salem, and he was glad to 
escape from it again when he went back in Maine to Bowdoin 
College at the age of seventeen. He was not at all eager for 
college, but regarded it as an unavoidable step in his training. 
At the same time he rejected the prospect of entering the 
church, the law, or the practice of medicine, and even as a 
freshman he wrote to his mother, '" What do you think of my 
becoming an author, and relying for support upon my pen ? " 
With such a point of view he did no better work than could 
have been expected. He was more interested in the reading 
of his own choice than in the assigned studies. He was 
somewhat frivolous, and even incurred discipline for minor 
offenses concerning which he wrote to his mother with amused 
and amusing frankness. He finished a shade below the middle 
of his class, and left Bowdoin with no more college interest 
than he had brought to it. 

Hawthorne's life for the twelve years which followed gradu- 
ation explains why he later referred so bitterly to his " cursed 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 239 

habits of solitude." The household to which he returned from 
Bowdoin was almost utterly unsocial. His mother's way of life 
had been adopted by his two sisters as well. The four members 
of the family — one is tempted to refer to them as " inmates " 
— saw very little of each other as the days went on. The 
young author neither gave nor received open sympathy. His 
writing, done in solitude, was not read to the rest. Conditions 
would have been sufficiently abnormal if he had daily come 
back to this sort of negative family experience from busy 
activity in the outer world, but of the outer world he knew 
nothing. Not twenty people in all Salem, he said, were even 
aware of his existence. If he left the house during sunlight 
hours, it was to take long walks in the country. He swam in 
the near-by sea before the town was stirring ; he walked the 
streets in the shadows of evening. His vital energy was drawn 
from reading and was vented on his own manuscripts. 

His writing during these years was done with patient per- 
sistence and without any reward of applause from the public. 
His first novel, " Fanshawe," was. published in. j 8 28 at his 
expense, was a failure, and was subsequently suppressed — 
as far as the discouraged author could recover the copies is- 
sued. From 1829 to 1836 The Token, an annual put out by 
S. G. Goodrich of Boston, was his main channel of publication, 
taking in these years about twenty-five stories and sketches. 
Through Goodrich he had also found a market for his wares 
in the New England Magazine, and toward the end of the 
period in the American Monthly Magazine of New York, and, 
best of all, with the Knickerbocker Magazine, which was the 
periodical embodiment of the Irving tradition and point of 
view. But though he was not unsuccessful in getting his work 
into print, he enjoyed no reputation from it, for only a few 
discriminating critics took any notice of it, and none of these 
was fully aware of the author's output, since he wrote not 
under one but under several pseudonyms. The lack of whole- 
some human contact either at home or abroad told inevitably on 



240 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Hawthorne's nerves and temper — he had become abnormally 
thin-skinned — and resulted in the touch of querulousness which 
the student finds from time to time in his accounts of himself. 
And it also resulted in the deep self-distrust and discourage- 
ment which grew steadily on him. " I have made a captive 
of myself," he wrote finally to his old college classmate, 
Longfellow, " and put me into a dungeon, and now I cannot 
find the key to let myself out, — and if the door were open, 
I should be almost afraid to come out. You tell me that you 
have met with troubles and changes. I know not what these 
may have been, but I can assure you that trouble is the next 
best thing to enjoyment, and that there is no fate in this world 
so horrible as to have no share in either its joys or sorrows." 
With 1837 the friendship of two college associates, Horatio 
Bridge, a man of political influence and a large heart, and 
Franklin Pierce, soon to be the president of the country, 
began to assert itself. Through Bridge the publication of 
"Twice-Told Tales" was effected in 1838. Through the 
influence these men were able to exert, Hawthorne was 
appointed weigher and gauger in the Boston Customhouse. 
With this post Hawthorne for the first time entered into 
active life, yet when he lost it as a result of a change of 
administration in 1841 he was som^ewhat relieved at the hard- 
ship. His engagement to Sophia Peabody led him next to 
attempt a living solution through residence and partnership 
in the Brook Farm enterprise during 1841. Again he was 
oppressed by having the world too much with him, and in 
1842, on his marriage, he settled in the seclusion of Concord 
for his first residence of something over three years. At the 
end of this time the needs of his growing family made an 
assured income imperative, and once more through the political 
influence at his command he was given a federal office, this 
time as head of the customhouse at Salem. He held this 
position, like the one at Boston, until a political reverse took 
it away from him in 1849. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 241 

Hawthorne was now nearly forty-six years of age. For the 
twelve years following the publication of " Twice-Told Tales " 
he had accomplished almost nothing in creative authorship. 
The human sympathy and companionship of his marriage, 
much as it meant to him, was offset as far as authorship went 
by the distracting need for money. With the loss of the post 
at Salem the outlook was almost desperate. In the dark hour, 
however, it appeared that his wife had saved a little from his 
slender earnings, and in the following months he wrote what 
appeared, through the friendly insistence of James T. Fields, 
as his first widely recognized work — "The Scarlet Letter." 
The first edition of this was exhausted in two weeks. The 
stimulus of popular attention encouraged him to a rapidity of 
production wholly out of proportion to anything in his earlier 
experience. In 185 1 "The House of the Seven Gables" was 
issued; in 1852 "The Blithedale Romance"; and in the 
meanwhile various lesser narratives were produced. At this 
stage his political friendships once more proved of value, and 
through the influence of Pierce, now president, he was enabled 
to go abroad in the consular service, first to Liverpool and then 
to Rome. His foreign residence continued until i860 and 
resulted, in authorship, in the last of his great romances, 
"The Marble Faun," the book of English reminiscences, " Our 
Old Home," and the " Italian Notebooks." With his return to 
America he went back to Concord, but though he was quite 
free and undistracted by financial worries, his major period as 
an author was over, and he died in 1864, leaving behind him 
only the unimportant stories " Doctor Grimshaw's Secret," 
" Septimius Felton," and the uncompleted "Dolliver Romance." 

In all the most obvious ways Hawthorne's literary output 
was a fruit of his pec\iliar heritage and surroundings and his 
consequent manner of life. A reading of his "American Note- 
books," the product of the late 30's and the 40's, reveals how 
definite was the preparation for the harvest to come. It was 
the gift of Hawthorne's imagination to shroud with a kind of 



242 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

unreality characters and backgrounds that were drawn from 
close observation. His interpretation made them his own, 
though they were evidently derived from the life about him. 
This process is in utter contrast, for example, with the inven- 
tion of Poe. There never were such individuals as Arthur 
(jordon Pym or Monsieur Dupin or Fortunato or Roderick 
Usher. They are essentially human, but they belong to no 
time or place. But Arthur Dimmesdale, Jaffrey Pyncheon, 
Hollingsworth and Kenyon, Hester, Phoebe, Zenobia, and 
Miriam were portraits, made in the image of people who had 
walked the streets familiar to Hawthorne. Poe's settings are 
convincingly real. One can visualize every detail of the City 
in the Sea or the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir, although 
one realizes that they never existed in fact; but Boston, 
Salem, Brook Farm, and Rome supply actual backgrounds 
for Hawthorne. Had the Puritans builded as securely as the 
Romans, " The Scarlet Letter," " The House of the Seven 
Gables," and "The Blithedale Romance" could be illustrated 
— as " The Marble Faun " often has been — from photographs 
of surviving structures. Again, these actual scenes and people 
were put into stories for which there were historical bases, 
and the symbols around which they were constructed — like 
the letter of scarlet and the many-gabled house — had been 
seen and touched by the author. The Maypole of Merry 
Mount once stood on the Wollaston hilltop, the great stone 
face is not yet weathered beyond all recognition, and the 
legends of the Province House are amply document. 

In the Notebooks, particularly for 183 5-1 845, there is abun- 
dant record of how Hawthorne's fancy was continually at play 
with the material within his reach. He made definite entries 
as to past events and vital associations *of old buildings. He 
made detailed studies of odd characters seen in his occasional 
little journeys into the world. He even saved proper names, 
phrases, similes, epigrams which some day might be of use : 
" Miss Asphyxia Davis," "A lament for life's wasted sunshine," 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 243 

"A scold and a blockhead, — brimstone and wood, — a good 
match," " Men of cold passions have quick eyes." But far 
more significant than these explicit items are the many which 
are suggestive of whole sketches or stories later to be written. 
Among these the following may easily be identified: "To make 
one's own reflection in a mirror the subject of a story " ; "A 
snake taken into a man's stomach and nourished there from 
fifteen years to thirty-five, tormenting him most horribly. 
A type of envy or some other evil passion." '" A person to be 
in the possession of something as perfect as mortal man has 
a right to demand ; he tries to make it better, and ruins it 
entirely." " Some very famous jewel or other thing, much 
talked of all over the world. Some person to meet with it, 
and get possession of it in some unexpected manner, amid 
homely circumstances." "The influence of a peculiar mind, 
in close communion with another, to drive the latter to insanity." 
" Pandora's Box for a child's story." " A person to be the 
death of his beloved in trying to raise her to more than mortal 
perfection ; yet this should be a comfort to him for having aimed 
so highly and holily." "To make a story out of a scarecrow, 
giving it odd attributes. ..." "A phantom of the old royal gov- 
ernors, or some such shadowy pageant, on the night of the evac- 
uation of Boston by the British." What Hawthorne attempted 
was essentially what Wordsworth did : to lift the material of 
everyday life out of the realm of the commonplace. 

In another and more important way Hawthorne's viritings 
show the effect of these long years of preparation, and that is 
in the s ^lf-reflec tion in the majority of them, and especially in 
the fouflnajoTromances. In the quarter century between his 
graduation from Bowdoin and the publication of " The Marble 
Faun," the most striking and the most dangerous feature had 
been his long isolation and the resultant effects of it. He had 
not withdrawn from the world in contempt ; he had insensibly 
drifted out of it. He was by no means indifferent to it ; on the 
contrary, he was increasingly sensitive to it. He needed to fill 



244 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

his purse and he needed encouragement to write. Yet when 
he went out into the market place he was cruelly ignored by 
many and shouldered about by the hustling crowds, who were 
so used to their own rude ways that they were often quite inno- 
cent of the affronts they put upon him. It is a consequence 
of this unhappy experience that in the famous romances and 
in many of the shorter sketches the narrative is woven around 
two types — a shrinking, hypersensitive character and a rude 
or insidious but always malevolent man who stands for the 
incarnation of the outer world. For Hester and for Arthur 
Dimmesdale, for Hepzibah and Clifford Pyncheon, for Priscilla 
and for Donatello, no complete isolation is possible. No deed 
which involves them, whether committed by themselves or by 
others, can be committed without regard to the future. Always 
there is a knocking at the gate, as the outer world insists on 
obtruding itself into the holiest of holies. And this invasion 
is the more cruel as it is the less deserved. Chillingworth's 
malign and subtle revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale is an exer- 
cise of poetic justice. It is a horrible but not undeserved visita- 
tion. But Priscilla, Donatello, and the two pitiful Pyncheons 
are innocent victims. Hepzibah and Clifford are hounded out 
of life by a bland representative of the law and the church, a 
wolf in the sheep's clothing of respectability. Priscilla falls in 
love with a reformer, one of the type who Thoreau complained 
pursued and pawed him with their "dirty institutions" and 
tried to constrain him into their "desperate, odd-fellow society"; 
she wilts at his touch. Donatello, the embodiment of innocent 
happiness, is enmeshed in the web of society and destroyed 
by the fell spirit at its center. Hawthorne never could have 
presented this view in its repeated tableaux if he had not for 
years seen the concourse of life rush by him, and for years 
made his successive efforts to reenter its currents. 

The whole situation is summarized in Hawthorne's intro- 
duction of Septimius Felton, hero of the last work of his pen. 
"I am dissevered from it," he says in the opening scene. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 245 

"It is my doom to be only a spectator of life ; to look on as 
one apart from it. Is it not well, therefore, that, sharing none 
of its pleasures and happiness, I should be free of its fatalities, 
its brevity ? How cold I am now, while this whirlpool is eddy- 
ing all around me." Yet, a moment later he snatches a gun 
and rushes out of the house to where he can see the British 
redcoats passing the Concord house. He refrains from shooting, 
only to be seen by a flanking party, and against his will is forced 
to fire a deadly bullet. " I have seen and done such things," 
he says an hour later, " as change a man in a moment. . . . 
I have done a terrible thing for once . . . one that might 
well trace a dark line through all my future life." To this 
degree, then, Hawthorne's surroundings and his own unfolding 
experience had supplied him with themes and materials. 

Much of the remainder of his work had its source in his 
Puritan inheritance. To this the already quoted passage on 
old Salem (p. 237) bears witness. To this heritage is due in 
large measure the essential gravity of his nature, which has 
been unfairly but suggestively described as a compound of 
'" seven eighths conscience and the rest remorse " ; and to this 
is partly attributable his absorption with the presence and the 
problem of sin in the world. " The Scarlet Letter " deals with 
its immediate effect on the transgressor ; " The House of the 
Seven Gables," with its effect on succeeding generations ; 
"The Blithedale Romance," with its blighting effect on the 
reformer, who is selfish and heartless even in his fight against 
social wrong; "The Marble Faun," with the basic reasons for 
the existence of evil. Yet though the Puritan strain in him 
could determine the direction of his thoughts, it could not 
determine their goal, for Hawthorne recoiled from the Puritan 
acceptance of sin as a devil's wile to be atoned for only through 
the sufferings of a mediator or the tortures of the damned. 
He rejected the Calvinistic fear of eternal punishment for the 
Miltonic conclusion that the mind is its own j)lace, and of itself _ 
can make a heaven of hell ; at which point he was at one 



246 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

with the Transcendentalists in substituting "for a dogmatic 
dread, an inimitable hope." His indictment of the Puritans 
themselves was more insistent than his charges against their 
theology. He condemned them for their cruel intolerance 
and for the arid bleakness of their lives. So he was at once 
a product of his ancestry and a living protest against it. 

But Hawthorne was more than a Puritan apostate ; he was 
in accord with most of the rising individualism of his day. 
He felt that as the result of multitudinous changes in govern- 
ment, church, and industry, the world had for the moment 
" gone distracted through a morbid activity " and needed above 
all things a period of quiet in which to recover its balance of 
judgment. So he distrusted the schemes of "young visionaries," 
"gray-headed theorists," "uncertain, troubled, earnest wanderers 
through the midnight of the moral world." Yet he acknowl- 
edged that as long as the world could not be put to sleep, 
restlessness was better than inertia. The radical Holgrave, in 
" The House of the Seven Gables," is his most sympathetic 
portrait of young America. A colloquy with Phoebe Pyncheon 
represents him as spokesman for the future, and Phoebe as 
the voice of the placidly thoughtless present. Her remarks, 
though brief, are quite as significant as his. 

" ' Just think a moment [he exclaims] and it will startle you 
to see what slaves we are to bygone times, — to Death, if we 
give the matter the right word ! ' 

" ' But I do not see it,' observed Phoebe. 

" ' For example then,' continued Holgrave, 'a dead man, if 
he happen to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer 
his own ; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance 
with the notions of men much longer dead than he. A dead 
man sits on all our judgment seats ; and living judges do but 
search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's 
books ! We laugh at dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's 
pathos! — We are sick of dead men's diseases, physical and 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 247 

moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors 
killed their patients ! We worship the living deity according 
to dead men's forms and creeds. Whatever we seek to do, of 
our own free motion, a dead man's icy hand obstructs us. 
Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead man's white 
immitigable face encounters them, and freezes our very heart ! 
And we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have 
our proper influence on our own world, which will then be 
no longer our world, but the world of another generation with 
which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere. I ought 
to have said, too, that we live in dead men's houses ; as, for 
instance, this of the Seven Gables.' 

" ' And why not ? ' said Phoebe, ' so long as we can be 
comfortable in them.' " 

Properly interpreted, this conversation implies vigorous criti- 
cism of both the youthful speakers. Holgrave's sweeping 
protests are too drastic, but Phoebe's placid acquiescence is 
deadening. As if Hawthorne were afraid his sympathy with 
Holgrave would not appear, he goes on to say that in the 
course of time the youth will have to conform his faith to the 
facts without losing his hopes for the future, "discerning that 
man's best directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while 
God is the sole worker of realities." 

It was this breadth of view, combined with his technical 
gifts as a teller of tales, that made Hawthorne a great artist; 
for no degree of skill or cleverness can give lasting significance 
to the work of a man who has not in spirit been taken up 
to a high mountain and shown the uttermost kingdoms of the 
world. Granted a " philosophy of life " which inspires a man 
to high endeavor and enables him to see the relation between 
the things that are seen and are temporal and the things that 
are not seen and are eternal, the creative artist need not be 
always preaching a moral or adorning a tale. The implications 
that he finds in his material and the abiding convictions he 



248 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

has about life and death need no labeHng. They appear as a 
man's character does, from his daily talk and conduct. Let the 
romancer state this in his own words : 

When romances really do teach anything, or produce any effective 
operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the 
ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, 
therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral, as with an iron 
rod, — or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, — thus at 
once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and un- 
natural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought 
out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of 
a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, 
and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first. 

Now and again Hav\^horne forgot this, and stopped to ex- 
pound and explain, which was unnecessary. And now and again 
he used his powers to vent his feelings by contemptuous portrayal 
of living people, holding them up to scorn, which was unworthy. 
But even though he lacked the Olympian serenity of the supreme 
story-tellers, he wrote as a wise man, and he wrote surpassingly 
well. It remains, then, to speak of his workmanship. 

In the preface to '' The House of the Seven Gables," from 
which the above passage is quoted, Hawthorne discusses his 
methods as a romancer : how he combines materials at hand, 
but makes them present the truth of the human heart not as 
the realist but under circumstances of his own choosing and 
with a " slight, delicate and evanescent flavor" of the marvelous. 
And this shadowy unreality, he points out, comes from the con- 
nection of "' a bygone time with the very present that is flitting 
away from us. It is a legend, prolonging itself, from an epoch 
now gray in the distance, down into our own broad daylight, and 
bringing along with it some of its legendary mist." It is a cue 
to every one of the longer tales and to most of the short ones. 
Always the outreaching hand of the past plucking at the gar- 
ments of the present, — the traditions of an elder day or the con- 
sequences of a deed committed before the opening of the story. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 249 

In a misty, twilight atmosphere, starting where stories fre- 
quently end, — with a momentous act already performed, — 
Hawthorne's romances proceed almost by formula. Each is 
dominated by a physical symbol, itself a suggestion of some 
connection with the past, continually recurrent, always half 
mysterious. Each is told in terms of a very small group of 
characters, of whom three usually emerge farthest from the 
shadows. The best of his longer works are not put into the 
"well-made plot" strait-jacket; and on this point Mrs. Haw- 
thorne's testimony is on record that the plots grew out of the 
people instead of being imposed upon them. Each is made up 
mostly of analytic interpretation of moods, and each is gar- 
nished with many a meditative commentary on the story-text. 
Finally, each and all of Hawthorne's writings are characterized 
by a scrupulous nicety of style, a leisureliness of sentence, 
a precision of diction that become the courtly manners of the 
old regime. He was as simple as formality will allow, as formal 
as simplicity will permit. If we are to liken him to other 
writers, it will not be to any contemporaries, not even to 
Mr. Hov/ells. The comparison will take us back to Goldsmith 
or Jane Austen or to those passages in Thackeray which are 
most reminiscent of the elder day. Moreover, the book style 
of Hawthorne was something quite apart from his letter writ- 
ing, which had a masculine directness and vigor. He was a 
late member of Irving's generation. When he wrote he " took 
his pen in hand " to address " the gentle reader." All such 
literary amenities are now the oldest of old fashions ; but when 
they were the vogue Hawthorne was a master of them. 

BOOK LIST 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. Works. There have been eighteen editions 
of Hawthorne's Collected Works between 1871 and 1904 in from 
6 to 1 8 vols. These appeared in book form originally as follows : 
Fang hawe, 1828 ; Twice-Told Tales, 1837; Grandfather's Chair, 
1 841; Famous Old FeopIeiT84i ; Biographical Stories for Children, 



250 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

1842; Mosses from an Old Manse, 1846; The Scarlet Letter, 1850; 
True Stories, 1851 ; The House of the Seven Gables, 185 1 ; AW.on-_ 
der Book, 1851 ; The Blithedale Romance, 1852; Tanglewood Tales, 
1853; The Marble Faun, i860; Our Old Home, 1863; American 
Notebooks, 1868; English Notebooks, 1870; French and Italian 
Notebooks, 1871 ; Septimius Felton, 1871; The DoUiver Romance, 
1876; Doctor Grimshawe's Secret, 1883. 

Bibliography 

A volume compiled by Nina E. Browne. 1905. Also Cambridge 
History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 415-424. 

Biography and Criticism 

Bridge, Horatio. Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 
1893. (Based on three papers in Harper^s Magazine, January- 
March, 1892.) 

Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909. 

Conway, M. D. Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1890. 

Erskine, John. Leading American Novelists. 1910. Cambridge 
History of American Literature, Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. xi. 

Fields, J. T. Hawthorne. 1876. 

Fields, Mrs. Annie. Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1899. 

Hawthorne, Julian. Hawthorne and his Circle. 1903. 

Hawthorne, Julian. Nathaniel Hawthorne and his Wife. 1885. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. American Notebooks. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. English Notebooks. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. French and Italian Notebooks. 

James, Henry. Nathaniel Hawthorne. 1879. {E.M.L.Ser.) 

Lathrop, George P. A Study of Hawthorne. 1876. 

Lathrop, Rose Hawthorne. Memories of Hawthorne. 1897. 

TiCKNOR, Caroline. Hawthorne and his Publisher. 1913. 

WooDBERRY, G. E. Nathaniel Hawthomc. 1902. (A.M.L.Ser.) 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the title essay in " Mosses from an Old Manse " and " The 
Custom-House " prefatory to " The Scarlet Letter " for Hawthorne's 
analysis of his feeling for the Puritan heritage. 

With these in mind read " Young Goodman Brown," " Governor 
Endicott and the Red Cross," and " The May-Pole of Merry Mount." 

Survey the " Mosses from an Old Manse " or " Twice-Told Tales " 
for the proportion of stories which are written against evident 
New England background. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 25 1 

Identify the passages from " The American Notebooks," cited on 
page 243, with the complete works for which they furnished cues. 

Read " The House of the Seven Gables " for the light it throws 
on the history of the Hawthorne family in the earlier generations. 

Read any one of the four great romances or the three later ones 
with reference to the constant recurrence of sin as a theme. 

Compare this treatment of sin in Hawthorne with the treatment 
of crime in Poe. 

Hawthorne is chiefly interested in individual experience. Read 
one of his romances for clear evidence of his social consciousness. 

Discuss his success in any given story in connecting " a bygone 
time with the very present that is flitting away from us." 

The use of symbols in the development of his long stories is 
obvious. How far does he rely upon the symbol in any one of his 
more effective shorter stories .? 

Glance over several short stories to see if any can be found in 
which action is not subordinated to its effect on the character who 
commits it. 

Read a selected chapter or two, such as the earlier ones in " The 
House of the Seven Gables," for observation on Hawthorne's stvle, 
particularly on the quiet play of humorin it. 



CHAPTER XVII 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

Whittier (i 807-1 892) stands in decided c ontrast botlLjiL 
upbringing and in career with the other great New England con- 
temporaries. All the rest were college men, graduates of either 
Bowdoin or Harvard between 1821 and 1838, and all were 
familiar from youth with the world of books. Whittier was a 
farm boy, sprung from untutored farming stock, and in the way 
of formal schooling had only two terms at Haverhill Academy, 
paid for with his own hard earnings. He was no less ret iring ^ 
in dijsposition than the Concord group, yet he was early drawn 
into the antislavery conflict, and through all his middle years" 
(from i833"~to"1[865) he was an untiring man of affairs. 
Emerson's interest in politics ended with the symbolical value 
of the Concord town meeting ; Thoreau's was registered in his 
spectacular protest (see p. 224) at a pernicious national policy; 
Hawthorne's was limited to the performance of duties in posts 
at the disposal of his political friends ;\but Whittier undertook 
the achievement of national ideals through the adoption of wise 
political measures.^ The same American to whom Emerson 
spoke as a thinker Whittier addressed as a voter. In conse- 
quence of this his immediate social value became greater, though 
the verse written in behalf of reform was inferior .^ In spite of 
his active role in public life, however, Whittier was very much 
less a man of the world than Lowell, Holmes, or Longfellow. 
These latter were all men of family, with advantages of college 
training and foreign travel. They were conscious members of 
the intellectual aristocracy, bred in polite usages and steeped in 
polite literature. When Whittier came to Boston for his first 

1 See his own acknowledgment in the " Proem " to the poems of 1842. 

252 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 253 

brief editorial experience it was not to the Boston of the charmed 
circle to which they and their like belonged. It was not until he 
had won independent fame that he became their honored friend. 
By birth he represented an old and stalwart element in New 
England life — the comparatively unlettered pioneers who made 
up the silent majority of the population. 

He was in every sense an Essex County man. He was born 
in 1807 in the township of Haverhill, to which his ancestors 
had come in 1638, on the farm they had owned since 1647, 
in the house they had built in 1688. He lived in the little 
three-mile strip between the Merrimac and the New Hampshire 
line for all his eighty-five years, first at his birthplace, and 
for the last fifty-six years at Amesbury, a few miles nearer the 
Atlantic. He thus became in a way an embodiment of local 
tradition. He felt the strong attachment to his small part of 
the world that develops in a group whose memories and inter- 
ests are almost wholly local, and he felt an allegiance to the 
soil that could respond to Emerson's " Earth Song " : 

They called me theirs, 

Who so controlled me ; 

Yet every one 

Wished to stay, and is gone. 

How am I theirs. 

If they cannot hold me, 

But I hold them ? <^ 

As a consequence he described the homely beauties that 
surrounded him, recorded the traditions of the region, and 
quite unconsciously, as his rimes often prove, wrote in its dia- 
lect (see p. 263). His sense of the reality of his state's division 
into counties is best indicated in the stirring roster which he 
calls in " Massachusetts to Virginia" (11. 67-80). 

Two other fundamental conditions prevailed in Essex County, 
though no more strongly than throughout the entire state. It 
was a time and place of splendid opportunities. In the colonial 
centuries, hardly more than completed when Whittier was born. 



254 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

pioneer America had barely coped with the elementary prob- 
lems of settlement. There still remained almost everything 
that had to do with the alleviations of life — with the nicer 
refinements, material, intellectual, and aesthetic. For any young 
man who could combine the will to do with some degree of 
action, the chance for achievement was exhilarating, — as the 
Essex boys Garrison and Whittier were to prove. The religious 
impulse of the day was closely related to these other stimulating 
conditions. It had the momentum of the generations behind it 
and the stir of the nineteenth century in it. It was old like the 
country and new like the period. It was dedicated to a high 
purpose, but its purpose was more than the personal salvation 
of the communicant ; it was the salvation of Church and State, 
the bringing of God's kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven." 
Whittier grew up, then, in simple and unlettered surround- 
ings, comparable to those of Carlyle, much more propitious than 
those of Lincoln. Like many another boy of the time when 
"child hygiene " was undreamed of, he probably suffered from 
insufficient clothing, unsuitable food, and undue exertion on the 
farm. At any rate his vigor was impaired and he matured; 
as often has happened, with just the fragility of health that 
responded to enforced care and resulted in long life. The read- 
ing supplied at home was arid, — a few narratives of frontier 
adventure, a few religious books, " the Bible towering o'er the 
rest," and a number of biographies. 

The Lives of Franklin and of Penn, 
Of Fox and Scott, all worthy men. 
The Lives of Pope, of Young, and Prior, 
. Of Milton, Addison and Dyer ; . 

Of Doddridge, Fenelon and Gray, 
Armstrong, Akenside and Gay. 
The Life of Burroughs, too, I 've read, 
As big a' rogue as e'er was made ; 
And Tufts, who, I will be civil, . 
Was worse than an incarnate devil. ' 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 255 

Poetry came to Whittier through the chance visit of a Yankee 
gypsy, '"a pawky auld carle' of a wandering Scotchman. To 
him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After 
eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he 
gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne." 
When the boy was fourteen his first schoolmaster, Joshua 
Coffin, brought a volume of Burns one day to the house and 
was persuaded to leave it for a while as a loan. With that 
closer introduction to the world of poetry Whittier's own 
verse- writing began. 

At eighteen he composed the first bi t that was destined to 
appear in print. It was an imitation of Moore, " Th e Exile 's 
D eparture ," which was sent without his knowledge to William 
Lloyd Garrisoa^s Free Press at Newburyport and published in 
June, 1826. The young editor, himself only twenty-one, was 
greatly impressed by the promise of these lines and hunted 
up the author, coming to the farm just when the embarrassed 
youth was hunting out a stolen hen's nest under the barn. 
Garrison's interest was of the greatest importance. Whittier 
was encouraged to write the nearly one hundred pieces of verse 
which appeared in the Haverhill Gazette in 1827 and 1828, and 
to earn by shoemaking the money necessary for his first sum- 
mer term in the new Haverhill Academy in 1827. The little 
learning he thus secured he converted by school-teaching into 
enough to take him for another term the next year, and then 
in 1828, through the continuing influence of Garrison, he 
was given his first position as an editor^ on the Amencan^ 
Manufact urer in Boston. He was still a simple country boy, 
and his published address, " to the young mechanics of New 
England," suggests that he had not been encouraged to forget 
this fact during his first four months in town. 

He has felt, in common with you all, the injustice of that illiberal 
feeling, which has been manifested toward mechanics by the wealthy 
and arrogant of other classes. He has felt his cheeks burn, and his 
pulse quicken, when witnessing the open, undisguised contempt with 



256 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

which his friends have been received — not from any defect in their 
moral character, their minds, or their persons, but simply because they 
depended upon their own exertions for their means of existence, and 
upon their own industry and talents for a passport to public favor. 

He held his post here only from January to August, 1829, 
when he was summoned home by his father's illness. Editor-^ 
ship of the Haverhill Gazette followed for the first half of 1830^ 
when he was called to the Nezv England Review in Hartford, 
Connecticut. This position he occupied with one interruption 
until the end of 183 1, at which time he took his leave of 
journalism. 

He was twenty-four years old — in the restless period between 
youth and real manhood. He had known little but hardship 
and had come out of it with impaired health. There was little 
to cheer him in the tragic career of Burns, in the almost des- 
perate enthusiasm of Garrison, or in the cynicism of Byron, to 
which he had lately become subject. To cap all, he had been 
" crossed in love." He could not even have the grim comfort 
of realizing that he was passing through a youthful phase when 
he wrote to a friend : 

Disappointment in a thousand ways has gone over my heart, and 
left it dust. Yet I still look forward with high anticipations. I have 
placed the goal of my ambitions high — but with the blessing of God 
it shall be reached. The world has at last breathed into my bosom a 
portion of its own bitterness, and I now feel as if I would wrestle 
manfully in the strife of men. If my life is spared, the world shall 
know me in a loftier capacity than as a wiiter of rhymes. There — 
is not that boasting ? — But I have said it with a strong pulse and a 
swelling heart, and I shall strive to realize it. 

This temporary abandonment of poetry was after all only an 
evidence of his regard for it. With all the other young writers 
of his day, he was hoping for new achievement in American 
literature and wondering in the back of his mind if he were 
not to be a contributor to it. At the moment Bryant had turned 
to journalism the New England group were not yet articulate. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 257 

and the call of politics was loud. "There was nowhere in 
America a writer of verse with more immediate promise than 
Whittier, [yet] he was a sick man in the old house at the back 
of Job's Hill, disgusted with poetry and planning how he could 
best get to Congress." 

Once more Garrison's influence was to determine him. The 
general inclination toward humanitarian reform had stirred him 
to the establishment of the Liberator, and when he declared, 
" I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — 
I will not retreat a single inch — and I will be heard," he 
found a natural ally in Whittier. The great step came in i5^ 
with the poet's publication at his own expense of the pamphlet 
"Justiceand Expediency," with its wider circulation through 
reprints by sympathizers, with the controversial sequels, and 
with his share in the founding of the American Anti-Slavery 
Society. In the years to come he said, "I set a higher value 
on my name as appended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 
1833, than on the title-page of any book." It was the deepest 
test of courage. In the first place it meant that a sensitive 
young poet who had already felt the injustice of the conserva- 
tive classes must lay himself open to their contempt and ridi- 
cule. It was a bitter time to do this, for never was a day when 
the miscellaneous inclination to reform offered so great an 
array of amusing causes and champions. Emerson's derisive 
list, " Madmen, madwomen, men with beards, Dunkers, Mug- 
gletonians, Come-outers, Groaners, Agrarians, Seventh-Day- 
Baptists, Quakers, Abolitionists, Calvinists, Unitarians and 
Philosophers," is evidence of the degree to which the general 
idea of reform had been discredited even in the most liberal 
minds. For there is no doubt that many of the projects were 
foolish or that the hopes reposed in them as social cure-alls 
were ridiculous. But the adoption of the abolition cause in- 
volved far more than ridicule — nothing less than the com- 
pletest disapproval of most good citizens. Considered in the 
large, lawyers and clergymen are conservatives by profession, 



258 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

deeply committed to the past; and here was slavery sanctioned 
in the law and the gospel. The prosperous merchant and 
banker are never markedly eager for a change from the con- 
ditions which have fostered their prosperity; and here was a 
whole economic system, from the plantations of the South to 
the financial houses of Wall Street and State Street, erected 
on a foundation of slave labor. According to Emerson cotton 
thread held the Union together. Men might devote their lives 
to the substitution of hooks and eyes for buttons or the adop- 
tion of a vegetarian diet, and get their pay in laughter, but 
when they threatened to disturb the industrial system they 
were pelted and hated and cursed. All this Whittier foresaw 
when he followed his own counsel of later years, " My lad, if 
thou wouldst win success, join thyself to some unpopular but 
noble cause." The history of his participation in the abolition 
movement does not belong to such a chapter as this except for 
a record of how he used his literary powers for the good of the 
cause, and for a comment on the kind of poetry that inevitably 
resulted from such use. 

Between 1831 and 1833 Whittier had become intelligently 
interested in politics ; indeed, had he been a few months older 
in the autumn of 1832 it is possible that he might have been 
elected to Congress as a compromise candidate when Caleb 
Cushing was unable to secure the seat for himself, though 
strong enough to prevent the choice of an opponent. The 
young poet had thus learned a good deal about the value of 
public opinion and about the power of publicity in molding 
and wielding it. When the American Anti-Slavery Society 
was formed he had at his hand a great megaphone that could 
project his voice to the far districts of the country. As a 
writerjof propagandist verse he was endowed with what in an 
orator would be a "natural speaking voice." His convictions 
were deep and sincere, he had an easy command of simple, 
rhythms, and he was used to thinking and speaking in the 
languSge of the people. He was in no danger of falling into 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 259 

academic subtlety or erudition. So, like his greatest American 
predecessor in this field — Freneau (see pp. 72-77) — he spoke 
again and again and always with telling effect. 

As a good_ journalist and rhetorician he made his issues 
plain^ and sioigle — much simpler in fact than they really 
were, avoiding embarrassing qualifications. He appealed to 
the Northerners as a people unanimously opposed to human 
bondage and not as a half-hearted and divided group. In a 
generation when the sense of statehood was infinitely stronger 
than it is now he assumed a high level of altruism in Massa- 
chusetts, while he stimulated a sense of state resentment against 
Virginia or South Carolina. With the memories of the Revo- 
lution refreshed by a series of recent semicentennials, he em- 
ployed the conventional language of protest against tyranny; 
the antislavery verses resound with vituperative allusions to 
chains, fetters, yokes, rods, manacles, and gyves, with Scriptural 
idiom and with scorn for the repudiation of Revolutionary 
principles of freedom. In the opening lines of " The Crisis " 
he was skillfully suggestive by his paraphrase of the mis- 
sionary hymn '" From Greenland's Icy Mountains," and in the 
" Letter from a Missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 
South, in Kansas to a Distinguished Politician " he turned to 
contempt the perversion of the Scriptures in defense of slavery. 

" Go it, old hoss ! " they cried, and cursed the niggers — 
Fulfilling thus the word of prophecy, 
" Cursed be Canaan." 

All this was justifiable, though it frequently was anything 
but high art. At times, however, the heat of passion led 
Whittier to write lines for which there was little or no excuse. 
His disappointment at Webster's famous " Seventh of March " 
compromise speech in 1850 led him to the extreme of- reproach 
which was felt by most of the North — an extreme from which 
he shared the common reaction of later years and for which 
he made the manly atonement of " The Lost Occasion," moved 



26q a history of AMERICAN LITERATURE 

by " the consciousness of a common inheritance of frailty and 
weakness." The lowest_]eyd _of his war vers e is reached in 
the most famihar " Barbara.Fr^^^^ This has all the attri- 

butes that are usually to be found in popular favorites. It is 
conventional in form, easily intelligible, a narrative of pictu- 
resque tableaux, and capped with an app lied m oral. The only 
charge that can be fairly brought against it is, however, a 
fundamental one — that it is essentially false to the facts. The 
middle third of the poem that has to do explicitly with Stone- 
wall Jackson is partly libelous and partly ridiculous. Jackson 
was an honest and devoted man, but he is represented as 
coming through the town like a stock-melodrama villain, 
blushing with remorse at the challenge of Barbara and cap- 
ping the climax with a burst of cheap and unsoldierly rhetoric. 
No doubt it expressed at the moment what the passions of 
war could lead even a gentle Quaker to believe ; no doubt 
also it was good war journalism ; but granting these conces- 
sions, it stands _as a deplorable e videiicg of .the ^ de.pths_to^ 
which noble talents can be degraded _in_fee--tifneathat;„ try 
men's souls. ' 

" The Waiting," a poem of 1862, is in the lof tier vein of 
one who does not reenforce himself through disparagement of 
his enemies. It is a lament of unfulfilled endeavor in behalf 
of an ideal cause. As a really great lyric should be, it is both 
personal and general in its application. It expresses the 
despondency of the enfeebled and aging poet that he could 
not join " the shining ones with plumes of snow " in the 
good fight ; and in its reference to " the harder task of 
standing still " it alludes not only to his resignation at the 
moment but also to the patient policy which in former years 
had estranged the extremest abolitionists from him. It also 
must have been an immediate source of consolation to thou- 
sands who have been confronted by urgent duties they could 
not perform ; while at the same time in a broader way it has 
expressed the faith of " Ulysses " and '" Abt Vogler," of "In 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 26 1 

Memoriam " and "Saul" and "Asolando," that "good but 
wished with God is done." 

Like Freneau (see pp. 71-81), but to a more marked 
degree, Whittier was most popular at first for his journalistic, 
conJroversial_^ems, though his most permanent work has 
nothing to do with either noble or ignoble strife. He followed 
the example of Burn s, who inspired his first literary passion, 
in writing simple lyrics and narratives of his own countryside. 
These included many of the legends of Boston, like " Cas- 
sandra^outhwick," of Hartford; like "Abraham Davenport," 
or of his beloved district north of Boston; like "The Wreck 
of Rivermouth," " The Garrison of Cape Ann," and " Skipper 
Ireson's Ride." As a rule he was not inclined to tell stories 
without some clear moral implication, and all too often he 
expounded this implication, sermon-wise, at the end. Thus 
he tells with dignity and fine effect the story of the Indian 
specters of Cape Ann, who were finally driven away by the 
prayers of the devout garrison after repeated volleys from 
their musketry had failed. In eighty lines the tale is told ; an 
added stanza calls attention to the fact that there is a moral 
in the ancient fiction ; and two more in a sort of sub-postscript 
indulge in a final burst of poetical exegesis. " Sk^per Ireson," 
th e best of . Wh ittier 's ballads, is no less moralistic, butTs~^one 
with m ore art, for the ethical point is developed within the 
account instead of being tacked on after it. 

In poems such as " Hampton Beach," " The Lakeside," 
" The Last Walk in Autumn," and " At Eventide " Whittier 
pictures the nature surroundings of his long lifetime ; and in 
a generous succession, from "Memories" of 1841 to "In 
School-Days," of nearly thirty years later, he takes his readers 
along the borderlands of autobiography. Preeminent among 
his recfillectionsu of. persons^ and places is " Snow-Bound." The 
snowstorm, which Emerson celebrated as a thing in itself, 
Whittier adopted as the background for a winter idyl. The 
" Flemish pictures of old days " which he drew of his Haverhill 



262 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

homestead were annotated in great detail by the poet, but their 
virtue lies not so much in the fact that they are true to a given 
set of conditions, as that they are essentially true to the rural 
life of Whittier's New England — just as the pictures in "The 
Cotter's Saturday Night" are true to the Scotland of Burns, 
and the pictures of " The Deserted Village " to the landlord- 
ridden Ireland of Goldsmith, And to the attentive reader the 
contrasts between the peasant life of Great Britain and the 
nearest thing to it that can be found in America are abiding 
witnesses to the practical virtues of a democracy. In this simple 
idyl, written with " intimate knowledge and delight," Whittier 
combined truth and beauty as in no other of his poems. 

For summarized criticism of Whittier's poetry there are i£SL 
b etter passages than his own " Proem " to the collected p^ems 
of 1849 and the comment in Lowell's '" Fable for Critics," 
of the preceding year, Whittier acknowledges the lack in his 
lines of " mystic beauty, dreamy grace " or of psychological an- 
alysis converted into poetry; Lowell confirms the judgment with 

Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction 
And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection, 
While, borne with the rush of his metre along, 
The poet may chance to go right or go wrong, 
Content with the whirl and delirium of song. 

Whittier lays his best gifts on the shrine of freedom with an 
avowal of his love for mankind and his hearty and vehement 
hatred of all forms of oppression, and Lowell properly qualifies 
the value of these gifts with the statement that the Quaker's 
fervor has sometimes dulled him to the distinction between 
" simple excitement and pure inspiration," Whittier deprecates 
the harshness and rigor of the rhythms which beat "Labor's 
hurried time, or Duty's rugged march," but Lowell says that 
at his best the reformer-poet has written unsurpassable lyrics. 
And both pronounce strictures on his rimes which have been 
conventionally repeated by most of the later critics who have 
commented on them at all. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 263 

Many of Whittier's apparently false rimes, however, — as 
the author of the " Biglow Papers " should have recognized — 
are perfect if uttered according to the prevailing pronunciation 
of his district. Lowell passes for a scrupulous dialect expert 
when he writes, " This heth my faithful shepherd ben," but 
Whittier is derided for allowing the same final verb to rime 
with " Of all sad words of tongue or pen," whereas the sole 
difference is that one recognized the pronunciation in his 
spelling and the other took it for granted. If Whittier had 
employed Lowell's method, in transcribing ''Barbara Frietchie," 
for example, he would have written. 

Quick, as it fell, from the broken sta 'af 
Dame Barbara snatched the silken sea 'af, 

and he would have concluded with 

Peace and odda and beauty drawr 
Reound thy symbol of light and lawr ; 

And evva the stahs above look det)wn 
On thy stahs below in Frederick teown ! 

For the ou sounds belong. to Essex County, and all the others 
to Boston and even to hallowed Cambridge. False rimes 
Whittier wrote in abundance, but by no means all of the 
apparently bad ones should be condemned at first glance. 
Until the publication of "Snow-Bound" in 1866 Whittier's 
verse, though widely circulated, had brought him in but little 
money return. For twenty years, he later recalled, he had been 
given the cold shoulder by editors and publishers; but as the 
hottest prejudices began to wane they could no longer afford 
to neglect, his manuscripts, for these had in them the leading 
characteristics of "fireside favorites," the. only sort of poetry 
that is always certain of the sales to which no publisher is 
indifferent. In the first place, their form is simple; common 
words and short sentences are cast in conventional rhjrthms 
with frequent rime. They are therefore easy to commit to 
memory. In content they are easy to understand, not given 



264 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

to subtleties of analysis or to philosphical abstractions. More 
often than not they are either narratives like the war ballads 
and the New England chronicles or strung on a narrative 
thread like " Snow-Bound." Almost always they contain vivid 
pictures ; mention of '" Skipper Ireson " or " Telling the 
Bees " or " The Huskers " or " Maud Muller " recalls tableaux 
first and then the ideas connected with them. And finally 
they contain the applied moral which the immature or the 
unliterary mind dearly loves, the very feature which proves 
irksome to the bookish reader serving as an added attraction 
to the unsophisticated one. It is not difficult to adduce popu- 
lar favorites which do not include all of these traits, but be- 
yond doubt the great majority of poems that are beloved by 
the multitude contain most if not all of them. When, in 
addition to these features, poems are essentially and perma- 
nently true to life and to the best there is in life their vogue 
is likely to be lasting as well as widespread. People cherish 
them as they do t^e melodies to which some of them are 
fortunately set, or as they do certain bits from Beethoven, 
Mendelssohn, Chopin, and Schubert, which belong to the reper- 
tory of every pianola or talking machine. On the other hand, 
the intricate beauties of Browning and Wagner or the austerities 
of Milton and Brahms will always be " caviar to the general." 
The last third of Whittier's life brought him the rewards he 
had earned and the serenity he deserved. He lived quietly at 
Amesbury under his own roof or with his cousins at near-by 
Danvers. He was on friendly terms with the eminent literary 
men and women of his day. A long protraction of ill-health 
from boyhood on had developed him into a fragile, gentle old 
man, a little shy and reticent and to all appearances quite 
without the fighting powers which he had displayed when 
there was need for them. If one chooses to recall Whittier 
from a single portrait, it should be from one taken in his 
middle rather than in his later life, for the earlier ones are 
far more rugged. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 265 

As the years passed they were marked by a succession of 
public tributes. At seventy the most famous of the annual 
^'Atlantic Monthly Dinners " was arranged in his honor. At 
eighty his home state officially celebrated his birthday. The 
anniversaries that followed were recognized in the public 
schools of many states; and so with "honor, love, obedience, 
troops of friends" he came to the end in 1892. 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

■ John Greenleaf Whittier. Works. Riverside Edition. 7 vols. 
(I-IV, Poetical works; V-VII, Prose.) Standard Library Edition. 
9 vols. (Includes content of the Riverside Edition plus the life by 
S. T. Pickard.) 1892. The best one-volume edition of the poems is 
the Cambridge Student's Edition. 1914. His works appeared in 
book form originally as follows: Legends of New England, 1831; 
Moll Pitcher, 1832; Justice and Expediency, 1833; Mogg Megone, 
1836; Poejns^ written between 1830 and 1838, 1837; Ballads, Anti- 
Slavery Poems, etc., 1838 ; Lays of my Home, 1843 ; The Stranger 
in Lowell, 1845 ; Supernaturalism in New England, 1847; Voices of 
Freedom, 1849; Old Portraits and Modem Sketches, 1850; Songs 
of Labor, 1850 ; The Chapel of the Hermits, 1853 ; Literary Recrea- 
tions and Miscellanies, 1854; The Panorama, 1856; Home Ballads, 
i860; In War Time, 1863; National Lyrics, 1865; Snow-Bound, 
1866; The Tent on the Beach, 1867; Among the Hills, 1868; 
Miriam, 1870; The Pennsylvania Pilgrim, 1872; Hazel Blossoms, 
1874; Centennial Hymn, 1876; The Vision of Echard, 1878; The 
King's Missive, 1881; The Bay of Seven Islands, 1883; Saint 
Gregory's Guest, 1886; At Sundown, 1892. 

Bibliography 

Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 436-451. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by Samuel T. Pickard. 1894. 2 vols. 

Burton, Richard. John Greenleaf Whittier. 1901. 
Carpenter, G. R. John Greenleaf Whittier. 1903. (A.M.L.Ser.) 
Claflin, Mrs. Mary B. Personal Recollections of John Greenleaf 

Whittier. 1893. 
Fields, Mrs. Annie. Authors and Friends. 1896. 
Flower, B. O. Whittier, Prophet, Seer and Man. 1896. 
Hawkins, C. J. The Mind of Whittier. 1904. 



266 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

HiGGiNSON, T. W. Cheerful Yesterdays. 

HiGGiNSON, T. W. Contemporaries. 

HiGGiNSON, T. W. John Greenleaf Whittier. 1902. (E.M.L. Ser.) 

Kennedy, W. S. John Greenleaf Whittier, his Life, Genius and 

Writings. 1882. 
Lawton, W. C. Studies in the New England Poets. 1898. 
Linton, W. J. Life of John Greenleaf Whittier. 1903. 
Payne, W. M. Cambridge History of American Literature, Vol. II, 

Bk. II, chap. xiii. 
PiCKARD, S. T. Whittier Land. 1904. 
Richardson, C. F. American Literature, Vol. II, chap. vi. 
Stedman, E. C. Poets of America. 1885. 
Taylor, Bayard. Critical Essays and Literary Notes. 1880. 
Underwood, F. H. John Greenleaf Whittier : a Biography. 1884. 
Wendell, Barrett. Stelligeri and Other Essays. 1893. 
Whitman, Walt. Specimen Days. April 16, 1881. 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the poems in Whittier the titles of which suggest local treat- 
ment of Essex County life and scenes. Compare these with similar 
poems in Bums. 

Read such poems as " First-Day Thoughts," " Skipper Ireson's 
Ride," " The Garrison of Cape Ann," " The Waiting," " The Eternal 
Goodness," and " Our Master " for evidences of Whittier's religion. 

Read Emerson's essay on " The New England Reformers," 
remembering that Whittier was one of these. 

Compare the war poetry of Whittier and Freneau. 

In Whittier's controversial poetry note the different levels of 
" Barbara Frietchie," " Expostulation," and " The Waiting," and cite 
other poems which may fairly be located in these three classes. 

Read Whittier's ballads with the comments on page 261 concern- 
ing his inclination to expound. Compare and contrast Whittier's 
" Snow-Boimd " with Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Night." 

Apply the tests for popular fireside poetry to those poems of 
Whittier's which you regard as general favorites. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

It is a matter of common practice to mention Henry Wads- 
worth Longfellow (1 807-18 82) as a member of "the Cambridge 
group," with the suggestion that there was some such agreement 
irTpoint of view as existed between the men who lived and wrote 
in Concord. Yet there was no such oneness of mind among 
Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes as among Emerson and his 
younger associates. Between Longfellow and Lowell the real 
point of contact was their scholarship, and particularly their 
enthusiasm for the writings of Dante ; between Lowell and 
Holmes there was neighborly regard but no real intimacy of 
feeling. The Cambridge men, to be sure, were different from 
the men of Concord. The fathers of all three were professional 
gentlemen of some distinction, all were college bred, ripened 
by residence abroad, and holders of professorships in Harvard 
College. All enjoyed and deserved social position as members 
of the " Brahmin caste," ^ all were frequenters of the celebrated 
Saturday Club, and all contributed to the early and lasting fame 
of the Atlantic Monthly. But as far as their deeper interests 
in life were concerned they went their several ways. Lowell 
was a representative first of New England and the North and 
later of the country as a whole ; Holmes belonged far more to 
Boston than to the college town across the Charles ; so that, of 
the three, Longfellow, the only one not born there, was most 
closely associated with Cambridge, less clearly allied with any 
other part of the world. In the literary vista, therefore, the local 
relationship should not loom too large. Longfellow should be 

^ See the first chapter of Holmes's " Elsie Venner " for a discussion of this 
New England aristocracy of birth and learning rather than of wealth. 
267 



268 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

considered as belonging to the same decades with Poe and 
Hawthorne ; his greatest productive period was at its height when 
Poe was hving, and was over before the death of Hawthorne, 
and his a ttitude toward Hfe was similar to theirs in its senti- 
mental fervor an d in its arti stic detachment. Lowell, in contrast, 
was a factor in the issues leading into and out of the Civil War, 
and Holmes's richest years bridged the '6o's. 

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, in 1 807, the second 
of eight children. The matters of conventional record are that 
on his mother's side he was descended from John and Priscilla 
Alden, and that his father was a lawyer with a good practice 
and a modestly well-equipped library. Able tutoring fitted the 
boy to matriculate as a sophomore in Bowdoin, in the class with 
Hawthorne, who was three years older. For a coming man of 
letters his record as a student was exceptionally good. Instead 
of being unsettled by vague dreams, he was stirred by a very 
definite ambition for "* future eminence in literature." His whole 
soul, he wrote to his father at the age of seventeen, burned 
most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centered in it. 
Then, just at the time when he was resigning himself to the 
law, in order not to be, like Goldsmith, " equally irreclaimable 
from poetry and poverty," the trustees of Bowdoin, emulating 
the example of Harvard, established a professorship of modem 
languages, offered it to Longfellow, and set as a condition that 
he should prepare himself by study abroad. In the three years 
from 1826 to 1829 his mastering of the Romance languages was 
perhaps less important than his breathing the cultural atmos- 
phere of the Old World. Life in America up to the nineteenth 
century had been a busy and self-centered experience. The 
chief consciousness of England and Europe had been a con- 
sciousness of other governments and of unsympathetic and 
conflicting loyalties ; and now was beginning to arise an aware- 
ness not only of how other peoples were ruled but also of how 
they lived and what they were thinking about. Longfellow had 
little to say of foreign unfriendliness which was still disturbing 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 269 

Irving and Cooper and Bryant (see pp. 1 1 i-i 14). In preparing 
to teach foreign languages and literatures he yielded to the 
spell of their richly picturesque traditions ; and his first work, 
"Outre-Mer" (1833), was an effort to expound these to his 
countrymen. This, too, Irving and Cooper had done, and from 
now on the refrain was to be taken up by most of the widely 
read American writers.^ 

As an i mpressionabl e young American he fell into the declin- 
Jngjsentimentalism of the period and wrote characteristically to 
his mother : " I look forward to the distant day of our meeting 
until my heart swells into my throat and tears into my eyes. 
I cannot help thinking that it is a pardonable weakness." He 
was so absorbed by all he was seeing and learning that he wrote 
no verse, letting the days go by until he concluded with the 
overwhelming seriousness of twenty-two that his poetic career 
was finished. As a matter of fact he was just complementing 
his native American feeling with a sense of the glamour of 
Old World civilization, and was on the way toward combining 
the two as poet and professor. Returning to his old college he 
taught there until in 1836 he was invited to succeed Professor 
George Ticknor at Harvard, again with the condition — implied 
if not imposed — that he go abroad for study. On his second 
sojourn he extended his knowledge to the Germanic languages, 
mastering them as thoroughly as he had French, Spanish, and 
Italian. In the end he is said to have had a fluent speaking 
control of eight tongues, with the power to " get along in " six 
more, and to read yet another six. Until 1854 he was engaged 
in his duties at Harvard, giving no little instruction, engaging 

1 A short list of the chief titles will include Longfellow's " Hyperion " 
(1839), Willis's " Loiterings of Travel " (1840), Taylor's " Views Afoot " (1846), 
Curtis's " Nile Notes of a Howadji " (185 1), Mrs. Stowe's " Sunny Memories of 
Foreign Lands " (1854), Emerson's " English Traits " (1856), Bryant's " Letters 
from Spain and Other Countries " (1859), Norton's " Notes of Travel and Study 
in Italy " (1859), Hawthorne's " Our Old Home " (1863), Howells's " Venetian 
Life" {1866), Mark Twain's "Innocents Abroad" (1869), and so on down to 
and beyond Holmes's " Our Hundred Days in Europe" (1887). 



270 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

all his assistants, and personally supervising their teaching. It 
was an irksome routine against which he began to rebel many 
years before he shook himself free. "It is too much to do for 
one's daily bread, when one can live on so little," he wrote in 
1839, "I must learn to give up superfluous things and devote 
myself wholly to literature." And in the same year he re- 
ferred in another letter to "poetic dreams shaded by French 
irregular verbs." 

If the distractions of his professorship had actually prevented 
all writing, he would doubtless not have held it eighteen years ; 
but in spite of handicaps his output was fairly steady through- 
out, and his most ri chly productive period — 1847-186^ — 
half overlapped his Harvard service. Aside from his fruitful 
activities in formulating books and methods for language study, 
and aside from his unijnpressiye prose volumes " Outre-Mer," 
"Hyperion," and "Kavanagh," his poetry was abundant andjn 
a way progressive. Most memorable among the early types was 
a sizeable group to which he referred in his diary and letters 
as " psalms." Of these, of course, " A Psalm of Life " is best 
known. Like all the others of its sort, it has the traits that 
are sure to endear it to the multitude. It is in a conventional 
ballad meter, alternating lines of four and three stresses with al- 
ternating rimes, it is easy to understand, it is constructed around 
one vivid picture, and it conveys a wholesome moral lesson. 
It is a general counsel to industry and fortitude. Its message 
is formulated in a closing stanza of " The Light of Stars," 

And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, 

That readest this brief psalm, 
As one by one thy hopes depart, 

Be resolute and calm, 

and its " act in the living present " is echoed in the daily 
achievement of the village blacksmith. 

Longfellow's labors as a tranjlatorJbegari_earlyL^^ 
throughoiitJiis-Ganeer, but it is interesting to see that in the 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 271 

earlier efforts a sober ethical note prevails, whereas many of 
the later translations are marked by simple charm and some 
by sheer frivolity. " The Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique " is 
a transparently veiled homily on the vanity of human wishes ; 
others from the Spanish are on "The Good Shepherd" and 
" The Image of God " and from Dante on " The Celestial 
Pilot " and " The Terrestrial Paradise " ; there is an Anglo- 
Saxon passage on " The Grave " and a fragment from a 
German ballad in which a ribald discussion of " The Happiest 
Land " is interrupted by the landlord's daughter who points 
to heaven and says : 

..." Ye may no more contend, — 
There lies the happiest land ! " 

In January, 1 840, the poet wrote to his friend George Greene : 

I have broken ground in a new field ; namely, ballads ; beginning 
with the " Wreck of the Schooner Hesperus " on the reef of Norman's 
Woe. ... I think I shall write more. The national ballad is a virgin 
soil here in New England; and there are great materials. Besides, 
I have a great notion of working on \}as, people^ s feelings. 

In j84i, consequently, there appeared his " Ballads and Other 
Poems." Longfellow had first intended callingl[Ke"voIume "The 
Skeleton in Armor," but the collection grew in number until 
this poem was overbalanced by the weight of the whole, and 
until — which is more significant — the native ballads were 
crowded by the introduction of poems from the German and 
Swedish and Danish. The change of plan, though slight, was 
indicative of what was taking place in Longfellow's development. 
He inclined, in the fashion of his day, to foster American sub- 
ject matter, but he was full of the spirit and content of Euro- 
pean literature which was unknown to his countrymen. Some 
years were to pass before he could hold his gaze away from 
" outre-mer." Another letter to George Greene shows how he 
was vacillating at this time. 



272 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

A national literature is the expression of national character and 
thought ; and as our character and modes of thought do not differ 
essentially from those of England, our literature cannot. Vast fields, 
lakes and prairies cannot make great poets. They are but the scenery 
of the play, and have much less to do with the poetic character than 
has been imagined. ... I do not think a "Poets' Convention" would 
help the matter. In fact the matter needs no helping. 

"E xcelsior " is a complete poetic fulfillment of this idea. 
There is nothing essentially American in the aspiration of youth. 
Longfellow therefore "staged" the ballad in the Alps, partly be- 
cause the Alps doubtless first occurred to mind and partly because 
in America no mountain heights were topped by the symbolic 
monastery from which the traveler could be found still aspiring in 
death. Again, lyrics like "The Day is Done," "The Old Clock 
on the Stairs," and " The Arrow and the Song" belong to no time 
or place but are meditative moments in the life of any thoughtful 
man. And finally, " The Bridge " is a representative combina- 
tion of native and foreign material. The bridge with wooden 
piers used to stand exactly as described over the Charles River 
between Boston and Cambridge. It was so near the ocean that 
the tides swept back and forth under it as they do not under any 
bridge in London or Paris or on the German Rhine. Yet in the 
second stanza the likeness of the moonlight to "a golden goblet 
falling and sinking into the sea " is evidently an allusion to a 
picture in Schiller's " Konig von Thule," a literary allusion but 
not a false one, for the moonlight might well look the same 
on the tide-tossed Charles as on the streaming Rhine. In his 
" Seaweed " Longfellow seems to have been half explaining 
and half defending such poetic processes : 

So when storms of wild emotion 

Strike the ocean 
Of the poet's soul, erelong 
From each cave and rocky fastness, 

In its vastness. 
Floats some fragment of a song. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 273 

The one point to accept with caution from all Longfellow's 
poems of self -analysis is the oft-recurring reference to heroic 
strife. Whatever heroism he felt or displayed "in the world's 
broad field of battle " was more quietly enduring than spectac- 
ular. The real Longfellow learned " to labor and to wait " ; if 
wild emotion ever struck the ocean of his soul he possessed 
himself for the tumult to subside. The finest of all his lyrics, 
" Victor and Vanquished," cannot be confirmed from the visible 
evidences of his career. The " Poems on Slavery," for example, 
attest only to the passive courage of his convictions. In 1842 
it was no small matter to come out clearly in public opposition 
to human bondage (see p. 257). Longfellow did not hesitate to 
risk his growing popularity by issuing this little volume. He was, 
and he continued to be, the devoted friend of Charles Sumner, 
Yet his antislavery heroism began and ended with these seven 
poems, and their value lay more in the bare fact that he had 
written them than in any ethical or emotional appeal. 

The period from 1847 to 1863 was, all things considered, 
quite the most fruitful for Longfellow ; and this contained no 
five titles to rival ' ' Evangeline " (1847), " The ^ Song of 
Hiawatha '^_ (i855), "" The Courtship of Miles Standish " (1858), 
" The New England Tragedy " (first form, i860), and " Tales 
of a Way side Inn" (1863). Thus, although he by no means 
abandoned^TSurope and the thoughts of Europe, he came at 
last and altogether naturally to the development of American 
tradition and the American scene. The immediate success of 
"Evangeline" (for five thousand copies were sold within two 
months) is easy to understand. The material was fresh and 
the story was lovely. Longfellow's reading-public, accustomed 
to certain charms and qualities in his work, found these no 
less attractively displayed in the long story than in his brief 
lyrics. The pastoral scene at the start, the dramatic episode 
of the separation, the long vista of American scenes presented 
in Evangeline's vain search, and the final rounding out of the 
story plot, all belong to a " good seller " ; and as it happened 



274 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

there was in America in 1847 no widely popular novelist. 
The field belonged to the author of " Evangeline " even more 
completely then a half century earlier it had belonged to the 
author of " Marmion," on the other side of the sea. 

In the journal of 1849 appears the entry, "And now I hope 
to try a loftier strain, the sublimer Song whose broken melodies 
have for so many years breathed through my soul in the better 
hours of life." This was a reference to " The Golden Legend," 
which appeared in 185 1, and which was in the end to become 
part of " Christus ." completed not until 1 872. In a sense 
this was the m ost ambitious, and l east effective of all his_ 
undertakings. It was t oo scholastic for the pu blic ; it was not 
a fit avenue to the feelings of " the /^<7//<? " whom in 1840 he 
had resolved to stir. By 1854 Longfellow entered in the jour- 
nal, " I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the Amer- 
ican Indians, which. seems to me the right one and the only." 
This was to do with the traditions of the red man what Malory 
had done with the Arthurian story and what Tennyson was 
soon to be reweaving into the " Idylls of the King." School- 
craft's Indian researches put the material into his hands, and 
the Finnish epic " Kalevala " supplied the suggestion for the 
appropriate measure. It appeared in 1855 and was demanded 
by the public in repeated printings. 

"Hiawatha" has a double assurance of wide and lasting 
fame in the fact that it appeals to young and old in different 
ways. It appeals to children because it is made up of a suc- 
cession of picturesque stories of action. Their lack of plots 
is no defect to the youthful reader — nothing could be more 
plotless then the various parts of "Gulliver's Travels" — and 
on the other hand few children detect or care for the scheme 
underlying them as a whole. They are as vivid and circum- 
stantial as "Gulliver" or as "Pilgrim's Progress." Further- 
more they deal with human types which belong to all roman- 
tic legend : Hiawatha, the hero ; Minnehaha, the heroine ; 
Chibiabos, the sweet singer, or artist ; Kwasind, the strong man, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 275 

or primitive force ; Pau-Puk-Keewis, the mischief-maker, or 
the comic spirit, — any child will recognize them for example 
in Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Allan-a-Dale, Will Scarlet, and 
Friar Tuck. Again, these human types are extended over into 
the animal world and even to the forces of nature, the latter, 
by the way, supplying frequently the place of the indispen- 
sable villain or obstacle between the hero and the achievement 
of his purposes. 

Unhappily the average adult who has read it in early life 
assumes that he has advanced beyond " Hiawatha," that he 
can put it away with other childish things, not realizing how 
much more than meets the eye resides within its lines. More- 
over, some grown-ups who do attempt a second reading are 
dissatisfied because their minds have stopped between childhood 
and maturity, stunted by too heavy a diet on obvious fiction 
and the daily newspapers. For the later reading of " Hiawatha " 
demands the kind of intellectual maturity that can cope with 
" Paradise Lost " or " Sartor Resartus " or " In Memoriam " 
or the classics which are quite beyond the child. The genuinely 
mature reader appreciates that the legends and the ballads of 
a people are never limited to external significance and that, 
whoever may happen to be the hero, it is the people who are 
represented through him. So the epic note emerges for him 
who can hear it. A peace is declared among the warring 
tribes ; Hiawatha is sent by Mudjekeewis back to live and toil 
among his people ; he is commended by Mondamin because 
he prays " For advantage of the nations " ; he fights the 
pestilence to save the people ; he divides his trophies of battle 
with them ; and he departs when the advent of the white man 
marks the doom of the Indian. And so the ordering of the 
parts is ethnic, tracing the Indian chronicle through the stages 
that all peoples have traversed, from the nomad life of hunting 
and fishing to primitive agriculture and community life ; thus 
come song and festival, a common religion and a common 
fund of legend, and finally, in the tragic life of this people. 



2/6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

come the decline of strength, in the death of Kwasind, the 
passing of song with Chibiabos, and the departure of national 
heroism as Hiawatha is lost to view, 

In the glory of the sunset, 

In the purple mists of evening. 

It is no mean achievement to write a children's classic, but 
the enduring fact about " Hiawatjia " is that it is a genuine 
epic as well. ^'^^NA 

No other poem of Longfellow's is so well ad jnstpd jj^ form 
and content. The fact of first importance is not that Long- 
fellow derived the measure from a Finnish epic but that the 
primitive epic form is perfect because it is the natural, unstudied 
way of telling a primitive story. The forms of literature that 
go back nearest to the people in their origins are simple in 
rhythm and built up of parallel repetitions. This marks a 
distinction between the epics about nations written in a later 
age, such as the Iliad and the ^neid and the works 
of Milton, and the epics of early and unknown authorship, 
such as the " Nibelungenlied " and " Beowulf." It was Long- 
fellow's gift to combine the old material with a fittingly primitive 
measure, joining as only poet and scholar could 

. . . legends and traditions 
With the odors of the forest, 
With the dew and damp of meadows. 
With the curling smoke of wigwams. 
With the rushing of great rivers, 
With their frequent repetitions, 
And their wild reverberations, 
As of thunder in the mountains. 

With "' The Courtship of Miles Standish " Longfellow 
returned to New England and told his first long story of 
his own district and of his own immediate people. Both 
" Evangeline " and " Hiawatha " were narratives that ended 
with themselves. The glory of the Acadians and of the Indians 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 277 

was departed. But " Miles Standish " was like the " New 
England Tragedies " in dealing with a people who were very 
much alive. For the early Puritan, Longfellow felt a thorough 
and abiding respect which was not untinged with humor. For 
his self-righteousness, his stridency, and his arid lack of feeling 
for beauty the poet showed an amused contempt, but for the 
essential qualities of rectitude and abiding persistence he was 
quite ready to acknowledge his admiration. There is a pleasant 
personal application in this story which he who runs is likely 
to overlook. Miles Standish was a worthy man, says Longfellow ; 
he was stalwart, vigorous, practical, and when put to the test 
he was magnanimous, too. But he was sadly one-sided. It 
was not enough to be like his own howitzer. 

Steady,' straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic, 
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen. 

He was of the sort who banished the birds of Killingworth 
with costly consequence. The worthier character was John 
Alden — " my ancestor " — who was like the Preceptor of 
Killingworth in his feeling for beauty in nature and in poetry 
and in song. '' Miles Standish " is his most amiable picture 
of the Puritans. In " The New England Tragedies " Governor 
Endicott's death is a poetic and divine retribution for his 
persecution of the Quakers, and Giles Corey's sacrifice to the 
witchcraft mania is a horrid indictment of bigotry unbridled. 

From 1863 on Longfellow continued in the various paths 
which he had already marked out, but his work in the main 
was in sustained narrative and in translation. His rendering 
of Dante is the preeminent piece of American translation, at 
once more poetic and more scholarly than Bryant's " Iliad " 
or Bayard Taylor's " Faust," It was a labor of love, extending 
over many years, the fruit of his teaching as well as of his 
study, and in its final form the product of nightly counsels 
with his learned neighbors, Charles Eliot Norton and James 
Russell Lowell. Age, fame, and the affectionate respect of the 



2/8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

choicest friends saw him broaden and deepen in his philosophy 
of Hfe. Little psalms and ballads no longer expressed him. 
Life had become a great outreaching drama at which he hinted 
in his cyclic " Christus : a Mystery." His last lyrics opened 
vistas instead of supplying formulas, and quite appropriately 
he left behind as an uncompleted fragment his dramatic poem 
on the greatest of dreamers and workers, Michael Angelo. 

There is no possibility of debate as to Longfellow's immense 
popularity. The evidence of the number of editions in English 
and in translation, the number of works in criticism, the 
number of titles in the British Museum catalogue, the number 
of poems included in scores of " Household " and " Fireside " 
collections, and the confidence with which booksellers stock up 
in anticipation of continued sales,^ tells the story. But these 
facts in themselves do not establish Longfellow's claim to 
immortality, for there is no necessary connection between such 
popularity and greatness. There was little evidence in him of 
the genius which takes no thought for the things of the morrow. 
Until after the height of his career he never wrote in disregard 
of the public. " The fact is," he sent word to his father, 
when he was but seventeen, "I most eagerly aspire after future 
eminence in literature." And even earlier he had laid down 
his program when he wrote, " I am much better pleased with 
those pieces which touch the feelings and improve the heart, 
than with those which excite the imagination only." He had 
the good sense and the honesty not to pretend to inspiration. 
On the contrary he was continually projecting poems and 
continually sitting down, not to write what he had thought 
but to think what he should write. He was an omnivorous 
but acquiescent reader, and what his reading yielded him was 
literary stuff rather than vital ideas. He accepted and reflected 
the ways of his own time and did not modify them in any 
slightest degree. He was never iconoclastic, rarely eve n fresh . 

1 See pages 2-7 in T. W. Higginson's " Longfellow," American Men of 
Letters Series. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 279 

He had something of Pope's gift for well-rounded utterances 
o n life , something of Scott's ability to tell a good story well, 
and withal his own benevolent serenity. 

This was not a supreme endowment, but it was a very 
large one, and he developed it to a lofty degree. There will 
always be a case for Longfellow in the hands of those who 
value the inspirer of the many above the inspirer of the wise. 
There are ten who read Longfellow to every one who reads 
Whitman or Emerson, His wholesomeness, his lucidity, his 
comfortable sanity, his v ery la ck of intense emotion, endear 
him to those who wish to be entertained with a story or soothed 
and r eassured by a gentle lyric. Edmund Clarence Stedman 
wrote finely of him : " His song was a household service, the 
ritual of our feastings and mournings ; and often it rehearsed 
for us the tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of 
our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodi- 
ous keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of 
the rote of the sea. There he lingers late ; the curfew bell has 
tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender 
voice is silent, and he softly moves unto his rest." 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Works. Riverside Edition, 1886. 
II vols. Poetry, Vols, I-VI, IX-XI. Prose, Vols, VII, VIII, 
Standard Library Edition. 14 vols, (Includes content of Riverside 
Edition plus the life by Samuel Longfellow.) The best single 
volume is the Cambridge Edition, His work appeared in book form 
originally as follows : Miscellaneous Poems from the United States 
Literary Gazette (with others), 1826; Coplas de Manrique, 1833; 
Outre-Mer, Vol. I, 1833, Vol, II, 1834; Hyperion, 1839; Voices of 
the Night, 1839; Ballads and Other Poems, 1842; Poems on 
Slavery, 1842; The Spanish Student, 1843; Poems, 1845; The 
Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 1846; Evangeline, 1847; 
Kavanagh, 1849; The Seaside and the Fireside, 1850; The Golden 
ITegend, 1851; Hiawatha, 1855; Prose Works, 1857; The Court-' 
sEifiroLf_ Miles^ Standish,j8j8 ; The New England Tragedy, 1 860 ; 
Tales of a Wayside Innj_i863; Flower-de-Luce,"T8B7; Dante's 



28o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Divina Commedia (translated), 1 867 ; The New England Tragedies, 
1868; The Divine Tragedy, 1871 ; Three Books of Song, 1872; 
Aftermath, 1873; The Masque of Pandora, 1875; Keramos, 1878; 
Ultima Thule, 1880; In the Harbor, 1882; Michael Angelo7i883. , 
Bibliography 

A bibliography of first editions compiled by Luther S. Livingston. 

Privately printed 1908. See also Cambridge History of American 

Literature, Vol. II, pp. 425-436. 
Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by Samuel Longfellow. 3 vols. These first ap- 
peared as The Life, 1886 {2 vols), and Final Memorials, 1887 (i vol). 
Austin, G. L. Longfellow : his Life, his Works, his Friendships. 1883. 
Carpenter, G. R. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1901. 
Davidson, Thomas. H.W.Longfellow. 1882. 
Fields, Mrs. Annie. Authors and Friends. 1896. 
Gannett, W. C. Studies in Longfellow, etc. 1898. {Riv.Lit.Ser.,No.i2.) 
Henley, W. E. Views and Reviews. 1890. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1902. 
HowELLS, W. D. My Literary Friends and Acquaintances. 1900. 
HoWELLS, W. D. The Art of Longfellow. N^orth American Review, 

Marcln 1907. 
Kennedy, W. S. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1882. 
Lawton, W. C. a Study of the New England Poets. 1898. 
Lowell, J. R. A Fable for Critics, passim. 1848. 
Norton, C. E. H. W. Longfellow : a Sketch. 1907. 
Perry, Bliss. Park Street Papers, The Centenary of Longfellow. 

1908. 
PoE, E. a. In Literati : Mr. Longfellow and Other Plagiarists ; 

Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Willis, and the Drama ; Longfellow's Ballads. 
Richardson, C. F. American Literature, Vol. II, chap. iii. 
Robertson, E. S. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 1887. 
Rossetti, W. M. Lives of Famous Poets. 1878. 
Stedman, E. C. Poets of America. 1885. 
Trent, W. P. Longfellow and Other Essays. 1910. Cambridge 

History of American Literature, Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. xii. 
Underwood, F. H. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : a Biographical 

Sketch. 1882. 
Winter, William. Old Friends. 1909. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read fifty pages at random from " Outre-Mer." Compare them 
in tone and style with a passage of equal length from the essays on 
English life in " The Sketch Book " or from " Innocents Abroad " 
or from Howells's " London Films." 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 28 1 

Apply the tests for popular fireside poetry referred to on pages 263 
and 270 to the poems of Longfellow which you regard as general 
favorites. 

Read from three to six of Longfellow's ballads and compare them 
with a similar number by Tennyson or Dante Gabriel Rossetti 
or Whittier. 

What was there in Longfellow's education and profession to lead 
him to the contention in 1840 that there was no difference in the 
characters and modes of thought of Englishmen and Americans ? 

See Whitcomb's " Chronological Outlines of American Literature " 
for the years 1845 to 1850 for the absence of any strikingly popular 
fiction in the period when " Evangeline " was published. 

Read " Hiawatha " for the broad view of ethnic life which natu- 
rally escapes the attention of the child reader. Compare in general 
the measures of " Hiawatha " and of " Beowulf " (in the original or 
in metrical translation). 

Note Longfellow's characterizations of the Puritans in the poems 
mentioned on page 277 and compare these with Hawthorne's. 

Read " The Prelude," " The Day is Done," " Seaweed," and 
" Birds of Passage " for Longfellow's comments on the poet and 
the poetic art. 



CHAPTER XIX 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) was born in Cambridge, 
the youngest of six childrenmisTather, the Reverend Charles 
Lowell, a Harvard graduate, was pastor of the West Church in 
Boston, three miles away. Elmwood was an ample New Eng- 
land mansion with the literary atmosphere indoors that is gen- 
erated by the presence of good books and good talk. The boy 
was one of a few day scholars at an excellent boarding school 
in town, from which he entered college in the class of 1838. 
Like many another man of later distinction in letters, he was 
more industrious than regular as a student, wasting little time 
in fact, but often neglecting his assigned work and sometimes 
lapsing into mild disorder to the extent of falling under college 
discipline. Toward the end of senior year he was actually 
" rusticated " for a combination of petty offenses. Under this 
form of punishment the boy, who was for a time suspended 
from college, was assigned to a clergyman in some country 
town and required to keep up in his studies until his rein- 
statement. It happened that Lowell was sent to Concord, and 
that here (while in charge of a clergyman with the ominous 
name of Barzillai Frost) he was fretting over the class poem, 
in which he commented with youthful cynicism on Carlyle, 
Emerson, the abolitionists, and the champions of total absti- 
nence and of woman's rights. It was an outburst on which he 
looked back with quiet amusement in later years : 

Behold the baby arrows of that wit 

Wherewith I dared assail the woundless Truth ! 

Love hath refilled the quiver, and with it 
The man shall win atonement for the youth. 

282 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 283 

And the proof that the boyish gibes were hardly more than a 
result of the impatience at his ungrateful weeks in Concord is 
contained in his record of the inspiration which he owed in 
student days to Emerson the lecturer (see p. 211). 

In the first years out of college, from which he graduated 
in 1838, he passed through the oft-trod vale of troubled inde- 
cision as to what he should do with his life. He rejected 
at once his father's profession of preaching and abandoned 
thoughts of the law after he had earned his LL.B. degree in 
1840. And then, following a brief and frustrated romance, 
he entered upon an acquaintance which culminated in his mar- 
riage to Maria White and resulted in his becoming a soberer 
and a wiser man. She was already deeply interested in the 
social movements toward which his mind was maturing. His 
devotion to her took permanent form in his first volumes of 
poems, " A Y ear's Life " {£8j.i) and " Poems '.LXl843)> and 
her influence on him is shown in his zeal for the very reforms 
which he had derided in his class poem three years earlier. 
He founded a new magazine, Tke Pioneer, which lived for 
three months in 1843 ; he contributed copiously to The Boston 
Miscellany, Graham s Magazine, and Arctunis; and, what was 
much more momentous, he threw in his lot with the ^boli- 
tionists by becoming a regular contributor to The Pennsylvania 
Freeman. Iri the meanwhile, also, in addition to his purely 
poetic work and to his reform enthusiasm, he took his first 
step toward scholastic achievement with his " C onversations on 
Some of the Old Poets ," which appeared in a volume of 1844. 
From now to the end of his life Lowell continued to distribute 
his energies among the fields of p oetry, ci vics, and scholarsh ip. 
. In 1845, 1846, and 1847 he wrote abundantly, widening 
his relations with the magazines of the day and apparently 
finding no trouble in marketing his wares. One piece of verse 
is preeminent in this period for both immediate and lasting 
appeal — ' ' T he Present Cr isis . ' ' It was Lowell's way of pro- 
testing at the national policy in the war with_Mexico and, in 



284 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

its contrast with Thoreau's method (see p. 224), throws Hght 
on the reformer's later strictures upon the recluse. It was 
repeated on every hand during the next twenty years and was 
given special emphasis through its frequent use by such orators 
as Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner. It was in 1848, 
however, that he came to the fullness of his powers, contrib- 
uting some fortyLarticles to four Boston periodicals and publish- 
ing four books "Poems (Second Series)," "A Fable for Critics," 
" The Biglow Papers," and " The Vision of Sir Launfal." He 
was only ten years out of college, and at that was only twenty- 
nine years old, but he showed se cure ta ste, confident judgment, 
and a seasoned ease_ of humor which belong to middle life. 
In the first and last, the more literary volumes, there is per- 
haps more evidence of youth. It appears in the effusive grief 
on the loss of his little daughter, and in " Sir Launfal " Lowell 
seems to be working too clearly after the somewhat confused 
formula laid down in the introduction to The Pioneer. Americans 
were to attempt a natural rather than a national literature. They 
were to remember that "new occasions teach new duties." "To 
be the exponent of a young spirit which shall aim at power 
through gentleness . . . and in which freedom shall be attempered 
to love by a reverence for all beauty wherever it may exist, is 
our humble hope." So in order not to be too aggressively 
national, he derived a theme from the literature of chivalry 
and adorned it with a democratic, nineteenth-century moral. 

" A Fable for Critics " is less consciously ambitious and 
more mature. Just how remarkable a piece of discrimination 
it was can be seen from a comparison of the writers criticized 
in it with those in Poe's " Literati " of two years earlier. 
Lowell's subjects are familiar to the modern general reader; 
he omitted t no man of permanent reputation and included 
almost no one who has been forgotten. Poe's selections, on the 
other hand, are quaintly unfamiliar as a whole to all but the 
professed student of literary history. His judgments on them 
are mostly sound, but his judgment in choosing them for 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 285 

treatment is open to one of two criticisms : either that he could 
not recognize permanent values or that, for personal and edi- 
torial reasons, he preferred to ignore them. In the " Fable " 
Lowell for the first time put to public use his r eady comma nd 
o fimp romptu verse. His pen was a little erratic, but when it 
would work at all, it was likely to work with happy fluency. 
The jaunty treatment of his contemporaries was quite literally 
a series of running comments, trotting along in genial anapaestic 
gait, stumbling sometimes on a pun, scampering with light foot 
across extended metaphors, and taking the barriers of double 
and triple rime without a sign of exertion. In point of method 
the " Fable " was a single exercise in writing the journalistic 
verse of which Lowell proved himself master in the two series 
of^^^iglow Papers" (1846-1848 and 1862-1866). It was 
exactly Reserving of Holmes's friendly comment, " I think it 
is capital — crammed full and rammed down hard — powder 
(lots of it) — shot — slugs — very little wadding, and that is 
guncotton — all crowded into a rusty-looking sort of a blunder- 
buss barrel, as it were — capped with a percussion preface — 
and cocked with a title-page as apropos as a wink to a joke." 
Different as it is from " The Literati" in scale, tone, individual 
subjects, and method of circulation, the two deserve mention 
together as antidotes both to Anglomania and to wholesale 
praise of everything American. 

With " The Biglow Papers " Lowell returned to the attack 
which he had begun in " The Present Crisis." He wrote in 1 860 : 

I believed our war with Mexico (though we had as just ground for 
it as a strong nation ever has against a weak one) to be essentially a 
war of false pretences, and that it would result in widening the bound- 
aries and so prolonging the life of slavery. . . . Against these and many 
other things I thought all honest men should protest. I was born and 
bred in the country, and the dialect was homely to me. I tried my first 
" Biglow Paper " and found that it had a great run. So I wrote the 
others from time to time in the year which followed, always very rapidly, 
and sometimes (as with "What Mr. Robinson Thinks") at one sitting. 



286 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He wrote the nine numbers of the series not only in the 
dialect of the countryside but from the viewpoint of a forth- 
right, hard-headed, Puritan-tinged Yankee; and he put them 
out as the compositions of Hosea Biglow under the encourage- 
ment of Parson Wilbur, without the use of his own name. He 
was surprised by the cordial reception of the volume, fifteen 
hundred copies of which were sold in the first week. If he had 
put on the cap and bells to play fool to the public, he said, it 
was less to make the people laugh than to win a hearing 
for certain serious things which he had deeply at heart. " The 
Biglow JPagers " were undoubtedly Lowell's great popular suc- 
cess. They carried the fight into the enemies' camp in the 
abolition struggle, they were resumed with new success with 
the outbreak of the Civil War, and they widened the reading 
public for his more sober political prose and for his more 
elevated verse. 

However, Lowell was not satisfied to be only a fighter. 
In a letter of January, 1850, he wrote to a friend: 

My poems hitherto have been a true record of my life, and I mean 
that they shall continue to be. . . . I begin to feel that I must enter 
on a new year of my apprenticeship. My poems thus far have had a 
regular and natural sequence. First, Love and the mere happiness 
of existence beginning to be conscious of itself, then Freedom — both 
being the sides which Beauty presented to me — and now I am going 
to try more wholly after Beauty herself. ... I have preached sermons 
enow, and now I am going to come down out of the pulpit and go about 
among my parish. ... I find that Reform cannot take up the whole 
of me, and I am quite sure that eyes were given us to look about us 
with sometimes, and not to be always looking forward. ... I am tired 
of controversy. 

Out of such a mood as this came the natural decision to 
make his first and long-deferred trip to Europe, a sojourn of 
fifteen months in 185 1- 185 2 with his wife and children. His 
wide reading of foreign literatures gave the keys to an under- 
standing of the peoples among whom he traveled, and especially 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



287 



to an understanding of Roman culture. His comments from 
Ronie furnish an interesting contrast with Emerson's ("Written 
at Rome," 1833). The reaction of the Concord philosopher 
had been wholly personal. Lowell's was wholly national. 

Surely the American (and I feel myself more intensely American 
every day) is last of all at home among ruins — but he is at home in 
Rome. . . . Our art, our literature, are, as theirs, in some sort exotics ; 
but our genius for politics, for law, and, above all, for colonization, our 
instinct for aggrandizement and for trade, are all Roman. I believe 
we are laying the basis of a more enduring power and prosperity, and 
that we shall not pass away until we have stamped ourselves upon the 
whole western hemisphere. 

On his return to America he plunged eagerly into writing, 
but the springs of utterance were soon sealed by the death of 
his wife. Following on the losses of his mother and two of his 
children this was the fourth and most crushing bereavement 
within a very few years. His recovery of working powers was 
aided by the distraction that came from an invitation to deliver 
the distinguished Lowell^ Lecture Series in Boston in the winter 
of 1854-185 5. These were to be twelve in number, on poetry 
in general and English poetry in particular. The task appealed 
to him as combining the beauty and truth to which he inclined 
to turn after his years of conflict. He threw himself whole- 
heartedly into the preparation and delivery of the lectures and 
succeeded admirably with his hearers ; but the greater result 
was an indirect one. While they were in progress Longfellow 
offered his resignation of the Smith Professorship "of the 
French and Spanish Languages and Literatures . . . and of 
Belles Lettres in Harvard College," a post he had filled since 
1836. Seven candidates of no mean ability presented them- 
selves for the vacant position, but the appointment was offered 
to Lowell, who had not applied for it, in preference to them 
all. He spent another year abroad before undertaking the 
work in the autumn of 1^8^, and held the position actively 
until 1877 and as emeritus professor until his death in 1891. 



288 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In this work he was a scholar and a critic rather than a teach er. 
He gave almost no elementary instruction in-the-Janguages, 
and his methods with his classes were casual to the neglect of 
the usual college traditions. What he did for his students was 
to share with them his own broad experience of life and letters 
and to show them how the study of foreign literatures was one 
with the study of history and philosophy. 

Lowell's course of life, however, could never be restricted 
to any single channel. If he had found in 1850 that reform 
could not take up the whole of him, he now discovered that 
scholarship was not all-absorbing. As early as 1853 the ques- 
tion of establishing a new Boston magazine had been in the 
air. When its chief promoter, Francis H. Underwood,^ had 
made certain of its start, Lowell was secured as first editor 
and carried it through the most critical period, until in 1861 
it passed into the publishing hands of Ticknor and Fields 
and under the editorship of the junior member of that firm, 
James T. Fields. In the editorial office, as at Cambridge, 
Lowell was relieved from the heaviest humdrum labor (espe- 
cially of correspondence) and was enabled to give his best 
energies to creative planning, yet it is interesting to see how 
effective were some of the detail criticisms accepted by poets 
like Emerson and Whittier and how vigilant, he was in his 
reading of manuscripts and proof sheets. Throughout it all he 
kept up a spring-flow of boyish jollity, no different in spirit 
from that in his letters of college days. 

An unpremeditated bit in one of his letters shows how the 
mind of professor and literary editor reverted to the excitement 
of politics on the eve of the war. It is in a fragment of bur- 
lesque on the type of love story submitted to the Atlantic : 
" Meanwhile the elder of the two, a stern-featured man of 
some forty winters, played with the hilt of his dagger, half 
drawing and then sheathing again the Damascus blade thin as 

1 See Bliss Perry's "Park Street Papers," "The Editor who Never was 
Editor," pp. 205-277. 



\ 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 289 

the eloquence of Everett and elastic as the conscience of Cass." 
From 1858 to 1866 he printed some sixteen vigorous and 
substantial political articles, besides many shorter notes and 
reviews, and during the latter four years resumed the " Biglow 
Papers," repeating and building upon his original success. 
The aggressive fighting spirit which he carried into the dis- 
cussion of definite men and measures did not blind him to 
the permanent values of the matters in dispute. The conse-i 
quence was that his political writings were limited to the Civil 
War only in the facts he cited, and that they apply to any 
war in the principles to which he appealed. There is no 
better illustration than " Mason and Slidell : a Yankee Idyll." 
In this the Concord Bridge and Bunker Hill Monument bring 
the spirit of the Revolution to the discussion of a Civil War 
issue, and between them they utter almost all the basic con- 
tentions of the World War which broke out fifty years later. 
They anticipate the vital things that have recently been said 
for and against military preparedness, international jealousies, 
the changes made necessary in international law by the progress 
of invention, the appeals to national hatred and to a tribal or 
national God, the viciousness of an indeterminate peace, and 
the essential values of democracy. 

From this ordeal by battle Lowell seems to have risen into 
a broader and nobler serenity. He balanced the prose essay 
on " The Rebellion : its Cause and Consequences " with the 
Harvard ""Commemoration Ode"; the next prose volumes, 
"Among my Books" (1870 and 1876) and "My Study 
Windows^'~fiB7T7, with the odes on "Agassiz" (1874) and 
"THTConcord Centennial" (1875) and 3ie''''TTiFee2Memorial 
Poem s "^i~i'B77. In all the poems he looked to the past, the 
struggle being over, for some evidences of strength and beauty 
in American life and for some assurances for its future; and 
in the literary essays he looked beyond nationalism to the 
permanent and universal values in literature. His political 
writings had appeared mainly in the North American Review ^ 



290 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

which he had edited (1864-1872) in cooperation with Charles 
EHot Norton ; and at this point younger admirers called him 
into public appearances as presiding officer, as committee 
chairman, as delegate to a Republican national convention, 
and as presidential elector. It even took some insistence toA 
carry through his refusal to run for Congress. Finally, in 1^77 
he entered as forei^i^iniruster on eight years of the highest 
service to his country, the first two and a half at Madrid and 
the remainder at London. Few men in America could have 
equaled him in ^s" qualifications for the Spanish mission. 
He had taught the language and the literature and was espe- 
cially well-versed in the drama, and temperamentally there 
was much in him which responded to the national character. 
He wrote to Mr. Putnam, " I like the Spaniards very well as 
far as I know them, and have an instinctive sympathy with 
their want of aptitude for business " ; and to Professor Child, 
" There is something oriental in my own nature which sym- 
pathizes with this ' let her slide ' temper of the hidalgos." Both 
of which statements should be taken as partly true to the letter 
and partly indicative of the adjustability which distinguishes 
the American from the Englishman. 

The most compact tribute to his five and a half years at 
the court of St. James was the remark of a Londoner that 
he found all the Britons strangers and left them all cousins. 
Lowell was one of the two extreme types of American whom 
Victorian England chose to like and admire. One, of the 
Mark Twain and Joaquin Miller sort, was free and easy, 
smacking of the wild West, completely in contrast with the 
English gentleman; the other, in the persons of men like 
Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton, was the nearest American 
approach to cultivated John Bull. In diplomatic circles 
Lowell's tact always mollified his firmness, even leading to 
criticism from some of his countrymen because he never 
defied nor blustered. And in his immensely important appear- 
ances as the representative of the United States at all manner 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 291 

of social occasions, he charmed his hosts by the grace and 
pertinence of his pubhc speech. 

His speech was the happiest, easiest, most graceful conceivable, 
with just the right proportion of play to seriousness, the ideal combi- 
nation of ingredients for a post-prandial confection. . . . He was 
pithy without baldness and full without prolixity. He never said too 
much, nor said what he had to say with too much gravity. His man- 
ner, in short, was perfection ; but the real substance that his felicity 
of presentation clothed counted for still more. . . . And in England 
his unexampled popularity was very largely due to this gift.^ 

In the years remaining to him after his return from London \ 
in 1885 he literally uttered much of the best that he wrote. I 
He was no longer an eager producer, but he could be stimu- 
lated to speak by special invitations. So he delivered addresses 
out of the fullness of his experience at Birmingham University, 
at Westminster Abbey, at the celebration of Forefathers' Day 
in Plymouth, at the 250th Anniversary of the founding of 
Harvard, before the reform leagues of Boston and New 
York, and at a convention of the Modern Language Asso- 
ciation of America. These, with his last volume of verse, 
" Heartsea se and Rue ^(i888). became his valedictory. He 
died in 1891. 

The outstanding feature of Lowell's career is that he was a__ 
Boet in ,.actign. His first and l ast_yolumes were I yhcs . In the 
forty-seven years between their issues he was always th e artist. 
He brought his e motional jfe o^or and his sense of phrase, to 
his essays, addresses, and occasional poems and to his pursuit 
of scholarship. His natural first interests were in the printed 
page and in the wielding of the pen ; measured by weeks and 
months his life was largely lived in retirement, but the step 
from reading and writing to active citizenship was an easy 
one, and in the world of action he seemed to make few 
waste motions. What he did not only counted in itself but it 

iW. C. Brownell, " American Prose Masters," pp. 271, 272. 



292 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

enriched his mind as much as what he read. And back of aill 
his activity were certain quahties that contributed to his effec- 
tiveness. He was a representative man, a fact acknowledged 
by his classmates who elected him their poet. He had the 
journalistic gift of saying excellently what others were on the 
verge of thinking. He did little thinking of his own that was 
original but much that was independent, and as a sane radical 
he was sure of the hearing he richly deserved. He was clever 
and charming, with a glint of errant . unexpectedGfiss, which 
was ingratiating even when it was far-fetched or even wan- 
tonly malapropos. His quips are like the gifts and favors of 
old-time children's parties — hidden all over the house and 
just as likely to defy search as to turn up under a napkin or 
in the umbrella of a departing guest. And behind all, Lowell 
was prevailingly American, with the combined trust in democracy 
and fear for it that belonged to his group in his generation. 
From 1820 on, Irving, Cooper, Bryant, and their followers 
had protested more and more frequently (see pp. 111-114) 
at the certain condescension in foreigners to which Lowell 
addressed himself in his essay of 1865. Yet all these men, 
and cultured America as a whole, played up to this conde- 
scension and encouraged it by evidently expecting it — stimu- 
lating it by the peevish feebleness of their protests. Lowell, 
though loyal, was always apologetic, always hoping to gain 
confidence in his countrymen. His intimate friend, Charles 
Eliot Norton, was deferent toward all things British or Euro- 
pean, and, while working valiantly to establish sound canons 
of taste, felt a distress for the crudities of American life that was 
only a refinement upon the snobbishness of the Effinghams in 
Cooper's " Homeward Bound " and " Home as Found." The 
fact is that the refined American of the mid-nineteenth century 
was afraid to contemplate the incarnation of America. He 
knew that Uncle Sam was too mature for it ; he feared that 
it was like Tom Sawyer ; he did what he could to mold it into 
the image of Little Lord Fauntleroy ; and he apologized for 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 293 

Whitman, When Mark Twain visited Wilham Dean Howells in 
Cambridge in 1871 they were both young sojourners from what 
was to Cambridge an undiscriminated West. Young Mr, Clemens 
did not care at all, and young Mr. Howells did not care as far 
as he was concerned, though he cared a great deal in behalf of 
his friend, who was so incorrigibly Western. And in record- 
ing his anxiety he recorded a striking fact of that generation : 
that American culture was afraid even of the rough-and-ready 
Americans whom Europe was applauding. " I did not care," 
said Mr. Howells of Mr. Clemens, " to expose him to the criti- 
cal edge of that Cambridge acquaintance which might not have 
appreciated him at, say, his transatlantic value. In America 
his popularity was as instant as it was vast. But it must be 
acknowledged that for a much longer time here than in Eng- 
land polite learning hesitated his praise. ... I went with him 
to see Longfellow, but I do not think Longfellow made much 
of him, and Lowell made less." ^ 

In habits of intellectual nicety, in manners, and in social 
inclination Lowell was an aristocrat ; yet in spite of these 
tendencies, and quite evidently in spite of them, he was in 
principle a stanch democrat, and when put to the test that sort 
of democrat is the most reliable. The conflict is interestingly 
apparent throughout his writings. The address on " Democ- 
racy" of 1888 need not be gravely cited as proof of Lowell's 
belief in government by the people ; it is only the final iter- 
ation of what he had all his life been saying. Yet after his 
usual leisurely introduction he approached his subject with 
the smile of half apology which had become a habit to him : 
" I shall address myself to a single point only in the long list 
of offences of which we are more or less gravely accused, 
because that really includes all the rest." It crops out in the 
Thoreau essay, apropos of Emerson : " If it was ever ques- 
tionable whether democracy could develop a gentleman, the 
problem has been affirmatively solved at last " ; and in the 

1 W. D. Howells, " My Mark Twain," p. 46. 



294 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Lincoln essay : " Mr, Lincoln has also been reproached with 
Americanism by some not unfriendly British critics ; but, with 
all deference, we cannot say that we like him any the worse 
for it." In the ode on Agassiz he heaved a sigh of relief 
that the great naturalist was willing to put up with New 
England conditions ; and even in the Harvard " Commemora- 
tion Ode " he broke out suddenly with : 

Who now shall sneer ? 
Who dare again to say we trace 
Our lines to a plebeian race ? 

The point is not in the least that Lowell did not believe in 
democracy ; every deprecating remark of this sort was pref- 
atory to a fresh defense of it. The point is that, as with a 
quarrel, it takes two to make a condescension and that Lowell 
did his part. It is difficult to imagine the young foreigner 
of " German-silver aristocracy " condescending with success to 
Lincoln or Emerson or to Mark Twain or Whitman. 

The frequent expression of this self-defensive mood is an 
illustration of another leading trait in Lowell — his^sg^ntaneity. 
Since he felt as he did there would have been no virtue in 
concealing the fact, and Lowell seldom concealed anything. 
He wrote readily and fully, often beyond the verge of prolixity. 
He gave his ideas free rein as they filed or crowded or raced 
into his mind, not only welcoming those that came but often 
seeming to invite those that were tentatively approaching. 
Only in a few of his lyrics did he compact his utterance. 
Most of the introductions to essays and longer poems proceed 
in the manner of the " musing organist " of the first stanza 
in " Sir Launfal," "' beginning doubtfully and far away," and 
what follows is in most cases somewhat lavishly discursive. 
The consequences of this manner of expression of a richly 
furnished mind are not altogether fortunate. Much of his 
writing could have been more quickly started and more com- 
pactly stated, and practically all of it could have been more 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 295 

firmly constructed. Emerson's essays lack firm structure 
because they were not written to a program, IBuFwefe aggrega- 
tions of paragraphs already set down in his journals. I^well's 
essays, although deliberately composed, were equally without 
design. His method was to fill himself with his subject of 
the moment and then to write eagerly and rapidly, letting 
" his fingers wander as they list." His productions were con- 
sequently poured out rather than built up. They Jhigye the 
character of rnost excellent conversation which circles about a 
single theme, allows frequent digression, admits occasional bril- 
liant sallies, includes various " good things," and finally stops 
without any definitive conclusion. In this respect, while Lowell 
was by no means artless in the sense of being unsophisticated, 
he was also by no means artful in the sense of calculating his 
effects upon the reader. The only reader of whom he seems 
to have been distinctly conscious was the bookish circle of 
his own associates. He would fling out recondite allusions as 
though in challenge, and he wrote in a flowing, polysyllabic 
diction which was nicely exact but which rarely would con- 
cede the simpler word. 

This same surging spontaneity was both the strength and 
weakness of his poetry. He inclined too much to foster the 
theory of inspiration. '''Tis only while we are forming our 
opinions," he once wrote, "that we are very anxious to prop- 
agate them " ; and as he indited most of his poems while 
he was in this state of " anxiety " they became effusions 
rather than compositions. His first drafts, in fact, were ful- 
fillments of Bryant's injunction in "The Poet": 

While the warm current tingles through thy veins 
Set forth the burning words in fluent strains. 

But in his revisions he was unable to follow the instructions 
to the end : 

Then summon back the original glow, and mend 
The strain with rapture that with fire was penned. 



296 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

As a consequence his poems when published were as inverte- 
brate as when he first wrote them, and of the revisions in detail 
many were shifted back to their original form. The degree to 
which he tempered the wind of self-criticism to his own poetical 
lambs is the more noteworthy on account of the acumen with 
which he commented as editor on the work of his fellow-poets. 

On the other hand, his easy command of versification, his 
gift of phrasing , and his rich poetic imaginatiga resulted in 
very many passages of beauty and feeling, particularly in the 
later odes like the Commemoration and Agassiz poems, into 
which he poured the fine fervor of his patriotism. In these 
his sincerity, his intellectual solidity, his idealism, and his 
nature-feeling combined with "the incontrollable poetic impulse 
which is the authentic mark of a new poem " and which 
Emerson ascribed to him in a journal entry of 1868. 

BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

James Russell Lowell. Works. Riverside Edition. 1890. 11 vols. 
Elmwood Edition. 1904. 16 vols. (Contains one more volume of 
literary essays, one more of poetry, and the three volumes of letters. 
C. E. Norton, editor. 1904.) These appeared in book form originally 
as follows: Class^Posm, 1838; A Year's Life, 1841 ; Poems, 1844;^ 
Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, 1845; Poems, Second 

j Series, 1 848 ; A Fable for Critics,, 1 84.8 ; . Xhe Biglow PaperSj.,,184^ 

iThe Vision of Sir Launfal, 1 848 ; Fireside Travels, 1864;. The 
Biglow Papers, Second Series, 1867; Under the Willows and Qth^ 
Poems, 1869; The Cathedral, 1870 ; Among my Books,. 18 7.0;^ My .. 
Study Windows, 1871; Among my Books, Second Series, 1876; 
Three Memorial Poems, 1877; Democracy and Other Addresses, 
1887; Political Essays, 1888; Heartease and Rue, 1888; Latest 
Literary Essays and Addresses, 1891 ; The Old English Dramatists, 
1892; Last' Poems, 1895; Impressions of Spain, 1899. 

Bibliography 

A volume compiled by George Willis Cooke. 1906. Cambridge 
History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 544-550. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by H. E. Scudder. 190 1. 2 vols. 

Benton, Joel. Lowell's Americanism. Century^ November, 1891. 



X 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 297 

Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909. 

Curtis, G. W. Orations and Addresses, Vol. III. 1894. 

GODKIN, E. L. The Reasons why Mr. Lowell should be Recalled. 

Natioti, June i, 1882. 
Greenslet, Ferris. Lowell : his Life and Work. 1905. 
Hale, E. E. Lowell and his Friends. 1898. 
Hale, E. E., Jr. Lowell. 1899. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Book and Heart. 1897. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Old Cambridge. 1899. 
HowELLS, W. D. A Personal Retrospect of Lowell. Scribner's, 

September, 1900. 
HowELLS, W. D. Literary Friends and Acquaintances. 1900. 
James, Henry. Essays in London. 1893. 
Mabie, H. W. My Study Fire. Ser. 2. 1894. 
Meynell, Alice. The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays. 1893. 
Norton, C. E. James Russell Lowell. Harper's, May, 1893. 
Norton, C. E. Letters of Lowell. Harper's, September, 1893. 
ScuDDER, H. E. Mr. Lowell as a Teacher. ^«Vi5«^r'j, November, 1891. 
Stillman, W. J. The Autobiography of a Journalist, chap. xiv. 1901. 
Stoddard, R. H. Recollections Personal and Literary. 1903. 
Taylor, Bayard. Critical Essays. 1880. 
Thorndike, a. H. Cambridge History of American Literature, 

Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. xxiv. 
Underwood, F. H. Lowell ; a Biographical Sketch. 1882. 
Underwood, F. H. The Poet and the Man. 1893. 
Wendell, Barrett. Stelligeri. 1893. 
Wilkinson, W. C. A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters. 

1874. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read " The Present Crisis " as determining the temper in which 
Lowell wrote his essay on Thoreau in view of their different reactions 
to the same national situation. 

Read what Poe, Longfellow, and Lowell had to say concerning 
overemphasis on the American quality of American literature as 
noted on pages 177, 272, and 284. Is there any clear reason for 
this- common dissent? 

Compare the people discussed in Lowell's " Fable for Critics " 
and in Poe's " Literati," published within two years of each other. 

Read the connecting prose passages between the " Biglow Papers " 
for interesting evidence of Lowell's attention to and knowledge of 
linguistic detail. 



298 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Read " Mason and Slidell : a Yankee Idyll " in " Biglow Papers," 
Second Series, as a commentary on the Great European War. 

Analyze the structure of a selected long poem and of a literary 
essay with a view to studying its firmness or looseness. 

Read any one of Lowell's five great odes and note the rhetorical 
fitness of meter and subject as contrasted with the artificiality of 
Lanier's later poems. 

Read "The Shepherd of King Admetus," " Invita Minerva," 
" The Origin of Didactic Poetry," and the passages on Lowell and 
his fellow-poets for his comments on poetry and poetic art. 



CHAPTER XX 

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

The name of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) is in all 
likelihood not so well known as the title of her most famous 
work, " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Millions upon millions have read 
her story, both for its interest and because of its place in Amer- 
ican history. Yet relatively few have read her other novels, and 
to-day those who turn to them do so not so much for their 
own sakes as because they contribute a minor chapter in the 
history of the American novel. She entered literature by the 
pathway of reform. " The heroic element was strong in me, 
having come down by ordinary generation from a long line of 
Puritan ancestry, and ... it made me long to do something, 
I knew not what : to fight for my country, or to make some 
declaration on my own account." Then, when the story-telling 
gift was developed and the reform was accomplished, she con- 
tinued to hold her mirror up to nature — a kind of Claude 
Lorraine glass with a strong tint of moralistic blue in it. 

She was born in 1 8 1 1 at Litchfield, Connecticut, one of the 
five children of the Reverend Lyman Beecher by his first 
marriage. Her famous brother, Henry Ward Beecher, was two 
years younger. The death of her mother when she was but 
four years old resulted in her having a succession of homes dur- 
ing girlhood : first with an aunt, then for some years under her 
father's roof after his remarriage in 18 17, and next from 1824 
to 1832 with her older sister, Catherine, who had established a 
school in Hartford. In all these experiences she lived under 
kindly protection and in somewhat literary surroundings, and 
in all of them she breathed an atmosphere which was heavy 
with the exhalations of the old-school Calvinistic theology. In 
299 



300 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

i8'32, when Harriet was twenty-one years old, her father, after 
a six-year pastorate of a Boston church, went to Cincinnati as 
president of the Lane Theological Seminary, and the two sisters 
joined him there. 

This move into what was then the Far West was not, how- 
ever, a banishment into the wilds, for Cincinnati was in those 
days a sort of outpost of Eastern culture. The Ohio River, 
which flowed by its doors, served\as the great highway from 
the East to the Mississippi Valley. The city attracted early 
travelers like Mrs. Trollope and Harriet Martineau as visitors, 
and stimulated them to ungracious comment, which was offset 
by longer or shorter residence of a distinguished succession of 
Massachusetts men. There were literary clubs, good and 
prolific publishing houses, and, in the Western Monthly, the 
beginning of a succession of magazines. Catherine wrote back 
from an advance trip of inspection : 

I have become somewhat acquainted with those ladies we shall have 
most to do with, and find them intelligent, New England sort of folks. 
Indeed, this is a New England city in all its habits, and its inhabitants 
are more than half from New England. ... I know of no place in 
the world where there is so fair a prospect of finding everything that 
makes social and domestic life pleasant. 

The seminary, a new institution, and Mr. Beecher, its first 
president, were located together at Walnut Hills, about two 
miles out of the city ; and while the father was occupied in his 
pioneer work the two daughters started a school for girls, with 
the double promise of Catherine's Hartford experience and the 
type of people among whom they were settling. But Harriet 
was not to be a schoolmistress for long. In 1833 she was the 
winner of a fifty-dollar prize in a short-story competition con- 
ducted by the Western Monthly, and in 1836 she married the 
Reverend Calvin E. Stowe, her father's colleague in Lane Semi- 
nary. How she persisted to combine authorship and maternity 
in the next sixteen years is a marvel ; none the less so becaus.e 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 301 

since the days of Anne Bradstreet an occasional woman has 
succeeded. In 1842 her husband wrote to her : " My dear, you 
must be a Hterary woman. It is so written in the book of fate. 
Get a good stock of health and brush up your mind." In the 
next year her first volume, a book of selected stories, was pub- 
lished by Harpers; but by 1848 she was the mother of six 
children, the oldest only eleven, and no more books had 
appeared. 

Nevertheless she was not to sink under the tide of home 
drudgery. She had visited in the South, witnessing the more 
kindly aspects of slavery, and in her own town she had seen 
the pursuit of fugitives, the conscientious defiance of law by 
devoted abolitionists, the violence of proslavery mobs, and had 
feared for the life of her brother, who was reported to have 
suffered death with his friend Lovejoy, when the latter was 
shot in Alton by a band of Missourians. In these exciting 
times it came to her more and more insistently that her writ- 
ing must be turned to good account. Lane Seminary was a 
seat of antislavery doctrine and was very likely saved from 
destruction by its fortunate remoteness from the town. But 
"Uncle Tom" was not to be written from here. In 1850, 
impelled by ill-health, Professor Stowe accepted a call to Bow- 
doin College, in which he had been a student. With three 
children she preceded him, and for the two months before the 
birth of her seventh child, in Brunswick, she carried the entire 
responsibility of choosing, equipping, and settling in their new 
home. In the meanwhile the family bank account was dis- 
turbingly low, and she was attempting to write. And in the 
meanwhile, too, Webster's " Seventh of March Speech" on com- 
promise with the slavery forces had stirred the North as nothing 
before and carried the country one step nearer to the Civil War. 
In the winter that followed Mrs. Stowe came to her great resolve 
to write something that would arouse the whole nation ; and at a 
communion service in February of 1 8 5 1 there appeared to her, 
as in a vision, the scene of the death of Uncle Tom. 



302 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The story began its appearance in the National Era, June 5, 
185 1, and was announced to run for three months, but as it 
was allowed to take its own course it was not actually con- 
cluded until April of the next year. Although it had already 
attracted the widest attention, the question of publication in 
book form was in some doubt until it was undertaken by an 
obscure Boston firm, and the outcome was so uncertain that 
the Stowes did not dare to assume half the risk of publication 
for a prospect of half the proceeds. Three thousand copies 
were sold on the day of issue, and three hundred thousand in 
America within the first year. In England, also, after an initial 
hesitation, reprinting was soon started, and by the close of the 
year eighteen different houses had put on forty editions, and 
in the end a million and a half copies were circulated in Great 
Britain and the colonies.^ Mrs. Stowe's " fortune was made " 
of course ; but of quite as much moment to her was the fact 
that her influence was made in the great fight in which she 
was enlisted. In 1853 she sailed for what turned out to be a 
sort of triumphal tour in Great Britain, in the course of which 
large sums of money were given her for use in antislavery 
outlay. Leading men and women, who had been formerly in- 
different, became through her book secondary sources of influ- 
ence. Moreover, there was value even in the opposition she 
had aroused. Whittier wrote to Garrison : " What a glorious 
work Harriet Beecher Stowe has wrought. Thanks for the 
Fugitive Slave Law ! Better would it be for slavery if that law 
had never been enacted ; for it gave occasion for ' Uncle Tom's 
Cabin.' " And Garrison wrote in turn to Mrs. Stowe : " I esti- 
mate the value of anti-slavery writing by the abuse it brings. 
Now all the defenders of slavery have let me alone and are 
abusing you." The volume of objection was so great and so 
much of it was directed at the honesty of the work that the 

1 In view of the lack of any copyright protection it is interesting to record 
that three of the London publishers offered Mrs. Stowe an interest in the 
sales of their editions. 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 303 

author reluctantly compiled soon after a " Key to Uncle Tom's 
Cabin," in which she presented documentary evidence for every 
kind of fact used in the story ; and of this she was able to 
write : " Not one fact or statement in it has been disproved as 
yet. I have yet to learn of even an attempt to disprove." 

The only fair basis for criticizing '* Uncle Tom " is as a 
piece of propagandist literature. It was not even a " problem 
novel." It was a story with an avowed "purpose": "to awaken 
sympathy and feeling for the African race, as they exist among 
us ; to show their wrongs and sorrows, under a system so 
necessarily cruel and unjust as to defeat and do away the good 
effects of all that can be attempted for them, by their best 
friends, under it." Mrs. Stowe felt no pride in it as a story, 
referring with perfect composure to the criticisms on its artistry. 
But as a popular document she composed it with the greatest 
of art. It was based on a profound conviction and on unassail- 
able facts. It was a passionate assault on slavery, but it was 
candid in its acknowledgments that many a slaveholder was 
doing his best to alleviate the system. Far more than half the 
book is devoted to kindly masters and well-treated bondsmen ; 
the tragedy of Uncle Tom is emphasized by the frustrated or 
careless benevolence of the Shelbys and St. Clare. The appeals 
to antislavery prejudice, moreover, could not have been more 
effective. The democratic movement which had swept Europe 
in 1848 was fresh in the minds of all thinking people. The 
challenge to Biblical Christian principle was made in a day when 
the citation of Scriptural authority was almost universally effec- 
tive. The natural resentment at beholding virtue thwarted by 
viciousness was stimulated at every turn in the story. And the 
frank association of beauty of character with beauty of form 
served its purpose. " Let it be considered, for instance," wrote 
Ruskin in " Modern Painters," " exactly how far in the com- 
monest lithograph of some utterly popular subject — for instance, 
the teaching of Uncle Tom by Eva — the sentiment which is 
supposed to be excited by the exhibition of Christianity in 



304 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

youth, is complicated by Eva's having a dainty foot and a well- 
made slipper." This was a chance illustration for Ruskin, who 
was writing about pictorial art, but the point of it is fully illus- 
trated by the visible charms of Eliza, Eva, Emmeline, and 
Cassie, as well as of George Harris, George Shelby, and St. 
Clare. Uncle Tom was almost the only good character who 
needed the defense " Handsome is that handsome does." It is 
not at all likely that Mrs. Stowe calculated on these various 
appeals — democratic, theological, sentimental. In fact we have 
her word for it that the book "wrote itself." With a moder- 
ately developed talent for story-writing she happened to have 
just the tone of mind and the level of culture which were 
attuned to the temper of her day, and she employed them to 
the utmost effect. Moreover, she used them just as Whittier 
used his powers in some of his moralistic poetry, not relying 
on her narrative to carry its own burdens but expounding it as 
she went along and appending a chapter of " Concluding Re- 
marks " with various odds and ends of afterthought — matters 
which do not belong in a novel and which do not even belong 
together in any well-organized chapter, but matters which in a 
persuasive document doubtless were of great value in bringing 
back to the application the minds of those readers who may 
have been diverted by the sheer human interest of the tale. 

" Uncle Tom " was a success which, of course, could not be 
duplicated. The second antislavery novel, "' Dred, a Tale of 
the Great Dismal Swamp," sold enormously on the strength of 
its predecessor and on its own merits, but it could only fan 
the embers which had previously been inflamed. The task had 
been done ; and though it was well repeated, and though the 
application pointed this time to the degrading effects of slavery 
on the master class, " Dred " could never be anything but an 
aftermath to " Uncle Tom." 

With a removal to Andover, Massachusetts, in 1852, Mrs. 
Stowe accompanied her husband to his last post in another 
theological school, settling into a congenial New England 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 305 

village in comfort at last and among cultured and orthodox 
neighbors. And here she continued to write until her final 
move to Hartford, doing her best work in the field of provin- 
cial stories of New England life and character. The first of 
these, " The Minister's Wooing," was her contribution to the 
newly established Atlajitic Monthly. With her recent successes 
fresh in the public mind, she was an indispensable " selling 
feature " for the ambitious magazine. With this novel she 
made her first attempt, since the forgotten " Mayflower " vol- 
ume, to write a story in which the moral should take care of 
itself. There was a moral, to be sure, and a striking one, for 
it pointed to a distrust of the older New England Calvinism 
and made clear the distinction between a religion that uplifts 
and a theology that turns to scorn the religion it assumes to 
fortify. In Simeon Brown she developed the obnoxious pro- 
fessor of the declining faith. 

He was one of that class of people who, of a freezing day, will 
plant themselves directly between you and the fire, and there stand 
and argue to prove that selfishness is the root of all moral evil. . . . 
He was one of those men who suppose themselves submissive to the 
divine will, to the uttermost extent demanded by the extreme theology 
of that day, simply because they have no nerves to feel, no imagina- 
tion to conceive what endless happiness or suffering is, and who deal 
therefore with the great problem of the salvation or damnation of 
myriads as a problem of theological algebra, to be worked out by 
their inevitable x, y, z} 

It answers to the refrain of " The Deacon's Masterpiece," 
which appeared while she was writing the book : " Logic is 
logic. That 's all I say." 

It is no accident, therefore, that she represents Simeon, this 
piece of corrugated inflexibility, as equally far from Dr. Hopkins, 
the large-hearted Puritan who was bigger than his creed, and 
from young James Marvin, who wanted to be better than he 
was but had no creed at all. In the chapter "Which Treats 

1 See " Theological Tea," chap. iv. 



3o6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of Romance " Mrs. Stowe perhaps did not let the moral wholly 
take care of itself, since she came into court as a special 
pleader for beauty as an ally of religion and brought an 
indictment against the niggardliness of a life founded on a 
dogmatic dread of eternal fire. The moral of the book, if one 
must be given in a sentence, is that love realized is even finer 
than love renounced. 

Like "Uncle Tom" and "Dred," "The Minister's Wooing" 
has its element of instruction as well as of edification, for it is 
a studied and faithful picture of Rhode Island life just after 
the Revolution — a period about as remote from Mrs. Stowe 
as the slave-story epoch is from the modern reader. And be- 
cause it is less of an allegory the characters are more lifelike, 
not having to carry each his Christian's pack of argument on 
his shoulders. As Lowell stated,^ they were set in contrast not 
by the simple and obvious method in fiction of putting them in 
different social ranks — aristocrat and commoner, master and 
man, Roundhead and Cavalier, pioneer, Indian and townsman. 
Between Mrs. Stowe's village folk caste distinctions were of 
little moment ; a careful realism was taxed to show the vital 
and homely differences between one individual and another. 
Her success in this respect is what gives any distinction to 
"The Pearl of Orr's Island" (1862). The Pearl herself, who 
is a bit of labeled symbolism (chap, xxviii), — a Little Eva 
transported to the Maine coast and thence to heaven, — is 
almost the only insignificant character. Moses Pennell, an 
exotic, is comparatively lifelike, and the actual village people 
are as real as can be. 

"Oldtown Folks" (1869) is Mrs. Stowe's most effective and 
least adulterated novel. The people of the story are many and 
varied, ranging from Sam Lawson, the village Rip Van Winkle, 
to the choicest of Old Boston adornments of society. While 
the book had no social purpose it had the avowed narrative 
"object ... to interpret to the world the New England life 

* New York Tribune, June 13, 1859. 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 307 

and character in that particular time in its history which may 
be called the seminal period" — a statement followed by the 
complacent and thoroughly provincial assertion that " New 
England was the seed-bed of this great American Republic, 
and of all that is likely to come of it." It should be remem- 
bered in Mrs. Stowe's defense that when she wrote these 
words the cleavage between North and South could account for 
many asperities from both sides and that to most Easterners 
"Trans-Mississippi" meant territory rather than people. In 
"breadth of canvas," to resort to the slang of criticism, "Old- 
town Folks" is in Mrs. Stowe's whole output what "Middle- 
march " is in George Eliot's. It is filled with popular tableaux — 
in the old Meeting House, in the Grandmother's Kitchen, at 
the Manor House, in the coach on its grave progress to Boston, 
in the school and its surroundings ; and it is red-lettered with 
festivals in which the richest flavor of social life in the early 
nineteenth century is developed. 

As a life story of the four youthful characters it does not 
linger vividly in mind. One does not recall them and their 
subjective experiences half so clearly as one does their intel- 
lectual and social and material surroundings. Yet the shape of 
their life experience was determined by just these external in- 
fluences ; and how clearly they belonged to a bygone period 
appears at a glance of comparison with any similar twentieth- 
century story .1 

Margaret Deland's "The Iron Woman," for example, is a 
companion picture of four young people, but with how great a 
difference ! The new industrialism, the decline of a theology 
which is only a relic in the iron woman, Mrs. Maitland, the 
post-Victorian attitude toward sex and the family, suggest the 
vast change in the fashions of human thought in a half cen- 
tury; and this is no less convincing because the conclusions of 

1 This distinction is valid even though the Oldtown folks belonged to 
Mrs. Stowe's childhood. The Andover of her later years was Oldtown in all 
essential respects. 



308 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Mrs. Deland's characters are practically identical with those of 
Mrs. Stowe's. With Mrs. Stowe marriage is a finality and sex- 
ual sin a damnation in the sight of God. With Mrs. Deland 
marriage is an expedient and a protection for the woman who 
may otherwise be abandoned, and sin is punished in remorse 
and loss of reputation. Mrs. Stowe is moved by the thought 
of hell ; Mrs. Deland, by the possibility of Promethean tortures 
from within. And in the later book capital and labor loom up 
to afford the background supplied in the earlier story by the 
church and its communicants. 

In the quarter century remaining to her after the writing of 
" Oldtown Folks," Mrs. Stowe's life was a quiet fulfillment 
of her earlier career. From a Florida plantation on which she 
spent her winters she worked for the welfare of the negro and 
the upbuilding of the South. She labored as before in coopera- 
tion with the church, but her repugnance for the grimness of 
Galvanism had led her to become an Episcopalian. !As a 
novelist she kept on in the exposition of New England and 
Northern life to the mild gratification of the reading public 
which she had already won — a reading public who enjoyed 
what Lowell almost too cleverly called "water gruel of fiction, 
thinned with sentiment and thickened with morality." Her 
enduring fame will doubtless rest on the fact that she was a 
story-writer of moderate talent who in one memorable instance 
devoted her gift to the making of American history. 

BOOK LIST 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. Works. The writings of Harriet Beecher 
Stowe, with biographical introductions. 1899. 16 vols. These ap- 
peared in book form originally as follows: Mayflower, 1843; Uncle 
Tom's Cabin, 1852; A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1853; Sunny 
Memories of Foreign Lands, 1854; Dred, 1856; The Minister's 
Wooing, 1859 ; The Pearl of Orr's Island, 1862 ; Agnes of Sorrento, 
1862; House and Home Papers, 1864; Little Foxes, 1865; Religious 
Poems, 1867; Queer Little People, 1867; The Chimney Corner, 
1868; Oldtown Folks, 1869; Pink and White Tyranny, 1871; 



HARRIET BEECH ER STOWE 309 

Oldtown Fireside Stories, 1871 ; My Wife and I, 1871 ; We and Our 
Neighbors, 1875; Poganuc People, 1878; A Dog's Mission, 1881. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard hfe is by Charles E. Stowe. 1890. The biographical 

introductions in the standard set are valuable. 
Crowe, Martha Foote. Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1913. 
Erskine, John. Leading American Novelists. 1910. 
Fields, Mrs. Annie. Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 1897. 
Stowe, C. E. and L. B. Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. 191 1. 

The following are among the more important of the many maga- 
zine articles that appeared in the months just after the death of 
Mrs. Stowe : 

Burton, Richard. Century, Vol. XXX, p. 690. 

Cooke, G. W. New England Magazine (N. S.), Vol. XV, p. 3. 

Fields, Mrs. Annie. Atlantic, Vol. LXXVIII, p. 15. 

HiGGiNSON, T. W. Nation, Vol. LXIII, p. 24. 

Lee, G. S. Critic, Vol. XXX, p. 281. 

Phelps (Ward), E. S. McClure's, Vol. VII, p. 3. 

Ward, W. H. Foncm, Vol. XXI, p. 727. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Contrast the conditions of authorship and the circumstances of 
publication for Jane Austen and Mrs. Stowe. Compare those of 
George Eliot and Mrs. Stowe. 

With reference to " Uncle Tom's Cabin " read Agnes Repplier's 
essay " Books that have Hindered Me " in " Points of View." 

Read " Uncle Tom's Cabin " for Mrs. Stowe's attitude toward 
the people of the South in distinction to her attitude toward the 
institution of slavery. 

Read " Oldtown Folks " or " The Minister's Wooing " for 
Mrs. Stowe's exposition of the orthodox theology in either. If you 
can read both, note whether there is any difference in her attitude 
toward the faith of her fathers in the two books. 

Compare Mrs. Stowe's New England village characters with those 
of Oliver Wendell Holmes in any of his three novels. 

Compare for the broad picture of a community and an epoch 
George Eliot's " Middlemarch " and Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown Folks," 

Develop more fully the comparison or the contrast between 
" Oldtown Folks " and Mrs. Deland's " The Iron Woman." 



CHAPTER XXI 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

In the roster of American men of letters it is hard to think 
of any other who is so completely th^^roduct_^_a_district and 
the spokesman for it as OHver'Wendell Holmes (1809- 1894). 
His whole lifetime was passed in two neighborhoods — that of 
Harvard^onegeJn_oldjCar)^ and that of Beacon Hill in 
oldest Boston. He was born in the college town in 1809, the 
same year with Lincoln. His father, the Reyerejid Abiel Holmes, 
was a fine exponent of the old orthodoxy and of the old breed- 
ing and a historian of the American Revolution. He was an 
inheritor of the blood of the Bradstreet, Phillips, Hancock, 
Quincy, and Wendell families, a kind of youth whose " aspect 
is commonly slender, — his face is smooth, and apt to be 
pallid, — his features are regular and of a certain delicacy, — 
his eye is bright and quick, — his lips play over the thought 
he utters as a pianist's fingers dance over their music." ^ It 
was a type for whose aptitudes Holmes felt the greatest 
respect. He thanked God for the republicanism of nature 
which every now and then developed a "large, uncombed 
youth " who strode awkwardly into intellectual leadership. He 
acknowledged a Lincoln when he came to maturity, but he 
expected more of a Chauncey or an EUery or an Edwards 
because of his inheritance. 

A prevailing alertness of mind in Holmes's generation offset 
the natural conservatism which belongs to an aristocracy. For 
a hundred years Harvard had been more liberal than Yale. 
The cleavage was already taking place between Unitarian and 
Trinitarian or Congregational believers. To be sure, the eyes 

1 " Elsie Venner," chap, i, " The Brahmin Caste of New England." 
310 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 311 

of Abiel Holmes were focused on the past, and he sent his 
son to be schooled under the safe injfluences of Phillips Andover 
Academy, which were fostered by the orthodox theological 
seminary just across the road. But even here Wendell — as 
he was called — decided against entering the ministry because 
a certain clergyman " looked and talked so like an undertaker." 
And when he entered college in his home town, while he 
faced the traditional required course of classical languages, 
history, mathematics, and moral philosophy, the wind from over 
the sea was blowing through it, and he breathed the atmosphere 
which was passing into the blood of Emerson and Thoreau and 
George Ripley and the other Transcendentalists-to-be, 

In his college days he was a little cheerful student of 
average performance who refused then as always to take 
himself soberly, although he did not lack inner seriousness. 
He practised his gift for writing and was rewarded by the 
acceptance of some of his efforts in the fashionable Annuals of 
the day — repositories of politely sentimental tales, sketches, 
and poems in fancy bindings which ornamented the marble- 
topped tables in the '" best rooms." Under his apparently 
aimless amiability, however, there was an independence of 
judgment which twice recorded itself, in 1829 and '30. The 
first time was on the occasion of an issue in his father's 
church when the son was forced to agree with the liberal 
majority, who literally took the pastor's pulpit from him, so 
that he had to reestablish himself in North Cambridge. Few 
harder tests could be devised than one between loyalty to 
conviction and loyalty to family interests. The other sign 
of independence was his choice of a profession. A boy of 
his heritage was socially if not divinely predestined for some 
sort of intellectual life. If he went to college, assurance was 
made doubly sure that he would not become a business man. 
From the outset he rejected the ministry as his " calling." He 
shrank from the formal complexities of the law as he did 
from the logic of the theologians. The thought of teaching 



312 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

did not seem to enter his mind. Literature could not afford 
him a Hvelihood. By eUmination, then, only medicine was left 
to him, but in his day medicine did not occupy a position of 
dignity equal with the other professions. Medical science was 
still in earliest youth, and the practice of " physic " was jointly 
discredited by the barber, the veterinary, the midwife, the 
"yarb doctor," and the miscellaneous quack. This young 
'"Brahmin," however, saw the chance for contributing to the 
progress of a budding science, and made his decision with 
quiet disregard of social prejudice. 

Study in Paris, successful research work, practice in Boston, 
and a year's teaching at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire 
led to an appointment on the medical faculty at Harvard 
which he held actively from 1847 to 1882 and as emeritus 
until his death. As a practitioner he was not remarkably 
successful. At the first his extremely youthful appearance and 
his jocosity of manner stood in the way. People could not be 
expected to flock to the office of a young man who was known 
to have said that " all small fevers would be gratefully 
received." And later his interest in things literary was regarded 
with distrust by prospective patients. As a teacher, on the 
other hand, he was unusually effective because of the traits 
which made him a poor business-getter. He was vivacious 
and deft in his methods. He knew how to put his ideas in 
order, he was a master hand at expounding them, and he 
was ingenious in providing neat formulas for memorizing the 
myriad details of physiology and anatomy. 

His professbn^juggHed Holmes with a background of 
thought which was different from any of his contemporaries. 
It supplied him with titles and whole poems, such as " Nux 
Postcoenatica," " The Stethoscope Song," and " The Mysterious 
Illness," with literary essays, such as "The Physiology of 
Versification," and with a whole volume of medical essays. It 
furnished the motives for his three " medicated novels," — 
prenatal influence in "' Elsie Venner," physical magnetism (by 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES .313 

its opposite) in "' A Mortal Antipat hy," and telepathy in " The 
Guardian Angel" It was the basis for scores of passages and 
hundreds of allusions in the four volumes of the '" Breakfast 
Table " series. And, furthermore, in the natural sympathy 
which it generated in him for every branch of progressive 
science it gave ground for the felicitous toast : ^ " The union 
of Science and Literature — a happy marriage, the fruits of 
which are nowhere seen to better advantage than in our 
American Holmes." This is not to say that Holmes was alone 
in his consciousness of science. Thoreau was fully as aware 
of it in the field of plant and animal study ; all things considered, 
Emerson and Whitman were more responsive to its deeper 
spiritual implications. It is rather that Holmes had his special 
avenue of approach through the lore of the physician. 

The Boston to which Holmes removed when he began his 
professional career was all-sufficing to him for the rest of 
his life. On Beacon Hill, the stronghold of the old social 
order, there was an eager, outreaching intellectual life. On 
its slope was the Boston Athenaeum ; just below were the 
Old Corner Book Store and the little shop maintained by 
Elizabeth Peabody. The theaters were rising at its foot. 
Music was being fostered under the wise persistence of James 
S. D wight, Washington Allston was doing the best of his 
painting, and the traditions of good statesmanship were being 
maintained by men like Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner. 
To cap all, good-fellowship reigned and many a quiet dinner 
became a feast of reason and a flow of soul. " Nature and art 
combined to charm the senses ; ' the equatorial zone of the 
system was soothed by well-studied artifices ; the faculties were 
off duty, and fell into their natural attitudes ; you saw wisdom 
in slippers and science in a short jacket." Although Holmes 
discounted it in the moment of utterance, he was not unfriendly 
to the dictum : " Boston State-house is the Hub of the Solar 

1 Meeting of the American Medical Association, May, 1853. The response 
was a poem. 



314 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

System. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you 
had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar," 

Moreover, as the half century of his Boston residence pro- 
gressed there was no waning in the intellectual life. The 
obvious leaders, whose names are known to everyone, were 
surrounded by a large circle of thinking men and women. At 
the corner of the Common, just across from the Statehouse, 
was the mansion of George Ticknor, then retired from his 
Harvard professorship but hospitable in the offer of his rich 
library to the new generation of scholars. William Ticknor 
founded a publishing business into which he soon took young 
James T. Fields, a house which under various firm names has 
had a distinguished and unbroken career. Elizabeth Peabody 
was a radioactive center of all sorts of enterprises and enthu- 
siasms — the Pestalozzian Temple School, the "conversations" 
on history, the book shop, and the temporary publishing of 
the Dial. Francis H. Underwood was the untiring champion 
of the idea which with perfect unselfishness he handed over 
to the abler founders of the Atlantic Monthly. And scores of 
others with less definite fruits of no less definite interest in 
life talked well and listened well and wrote well for the passing 
reader of the day. 

In this community Holmes early took his place as the 
accepted humorist, and for the first t wenty -five years he_wrote 
almost entirely in verse. The facTthat two^oFTiis^earliest and 
most famous" poems were anything but funny reenforces the 
point rather than gainsays it. For the humorist, in contrast 
to the joker, is a serious man with a speciaTmethod which he 
employs usually but not always. If Holmes had not been 
capable of blazing with the indignation of " Old Ironsides " 
or glowing with the sympathy of "The Last Leaf," he v/ould 
have been a clever dispenser of jollities but not a commentator 
on life. Much of his youthful composition was of the lighter 
variety — pleasant extravagances on the level of the " Croaker 
Papers," not quite up to Salmagundi (see pp. ii6, 134). 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 315 

"The Music Grinders, "The Comet," "Daily Trials," and 
" The Stethoscope Song " belong in this class. More humorous 
and less jocose are the verse with a definite satirical turn. 
" The Ballad of the Oysterman " was a gibe at the sentimental 
lays to be found in all the Annuals. " My Aunt" hit off the 
ApoUinean Institute type of Young Lady Finishing School to 
which he returned in a chapter of " Elsie Venner " ; the sort 
of subject to which he returned too in his shafts at the Latter- 
Day Adventists, in " Latter-Day Warnings," and at the decline 
of Calvinism, in " The Deacon's Masterpiece." 

At the same time Holmes won a place as the local laureate, 
— for his class of 1829, for Harvard, and for every kind of 
occasion, grave and gay, on which some appropriate verse could 
point a moral and adorn the program. This is an easy accom- 
plishment for those who have the gift, but both difficult and 
dull in the hands of many a poet who is capable of higher 
things. It demands fluency ofpen, readjjnventiveness, infor- 
n^ality. and a c onfident gooThumor in its oral delivery. These 
all belonged toI?olmes7"an3~norTiea^^ a gracious 

sodaljnaTiJier. It is far easier to depreciate this kirra cjTverse 
than it is to be consistently effective in it. 

Twice in his early maturity he wrote in verse on the theory 
of poetry. The first, in 1836, when he was entering the 
medical profession, was his Phi Beta Kappa poem "Poetry"; 
the second was " Urania," in 1846, shortly before he accepted 
his Harvard professorship. The object of " Poetry," he wrote 
in a preface for its publication, was " to express some general 
truths on the sources and the machinery of poetry ; to sketch 
some changes which may be said to have taken place in its 
history, constituting four grand eras ; and to point out some 
less obvious manifestations of the poetic principle." In old 
age he looked back on this ambitious early effort with kindly 
indulgence, and allowed it to stand as a matter of biographical 
interest, although it was so evidently the product " of a young 
person trained after the schools of classical English verse as 



3i6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

represented by Pope, Goldsmith, and Campbell, with whose lines 
his memory was early stocked." When, however, he wrote 
" Urania, a Rhymed Lesson " he wore a friendly smile and did 
his teaching in a less didactic way. He knew his audience, he 
said, and he knew that they all expected to be amused. 

I know a tailor, once a friend of mine, 

Expects great doings in the button line, — 

For mirth's concussions rip the outward case. 

And plant the stitches in a tenderer place, 

I know my audience, — these shall have their due ; 

A smile awaits them ere my song is through ! 

But, he went on to say, he knew himself, too, and he pro- 
posed no more to be the buffoon than to be the savage satirist. 
Beneath his smiles there was a kindly seriousness. A dozen 
years later, in the fifth of the "Autocrat" papers, he put the 
case in a little allegory, the end of which is worth quoting 
in full: 

The stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature borne down 
and bleached of all its color by it. The shapes which are found beneath 
are the crafty beings which thrive in darkness, and the weaker organ- 
isms kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is whosoever 
puts the staff of truth to the old lying incubus, no matter whether he 
do it with a serious face or a laughing one. The next year stands for 
the coming time. Then shall the nature which had lain blanched and 
broken rise in its full stature and native hues in the sunshine. Then 
shall God's minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-bom 
humanity. Then shall beauty — Divinity taking outlines and color — 
light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, image of the beatified 
spirit rising from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor grub, 
which would never have found wings, had not the stone been lifted. 

By these stages, then. Holmes con cluded^ that he wp,s an 

-es^ayistand developed into bner*Tlie'''^oetry " of 1836 was 

entitled " A Metrical Essay," and it was, without intending to 

be, distinctly prosaic. "Urania," of 1846, was self-described as 

"A Rhymed Lesson" and affected to be nothing more. At 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 317 

last " The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " — adopting the title 
and the form of an unsuccessful beginning in the New Eng- 
land Magazine of 1 831-1832 — resorted frankly to prose and 
achieved a wider reputation for Holmes than all the foregoing 
verse had done.i The young person trained through the read- 
ing of ^,pfi„,.„Cia]| dsmith, and Campbell was in the end^jBLtted 
to do his best work afterthe manner of Addison, Goldsmith^ 
and Lamb. From the appearance of " The Autocrat " Holmes's 
verse was subordinated in bulk and importance to his prose. 
"^ With his assumption of the 4l^sa^e,ditocshigf Lowell had 
set the prime condition that Holmes should become a regular 
contributor, and it is evident from the motto on the title page, 
" Every man his own Boswell," that Holmes's conversation had 
furnished the suggestion for the series. The vehicle was per- 
fectly adapted to the load it was devised to carry. The introduc- 
tion of a chief spokesman in a loosely organized group made 
way for the casual drift from topic to topic. The accident 
of a boarding-house selection justified the domination by one 
speaker which would have been unnatural in any social group. 
The continuity of the group gave a chance for characterization 
and for the spinning of a slight narrative thread comparable 
to those on which the Citizen of the World and the " De 
Coverley Papers " were strung. And the chief speaker, auto- 
crat that he was, could give vent to his thoughts on the uni- 
verse without let or hindrance, and when the whim seized 
him could impose his latest poems upon his always tolerant 
and usually deferential fellow-boarders. From the publication 
of the first number Lowell's judgment was vindicated, with the 
result not only that the Autocrat spoke through twelve issues, 
but that the thread of his discourse was continued with " The 
Professor at the Breakfast-Table," in 1859, was resumed with 

1 For a direct statement on the resumption of the old attempt, see " The 
Autocrat's Autobiography" printed as a foreword to the volume. For an 
indirect account, see the passages on Byles Gridley and his " Thoughts on the 
Universe " in Holmes's " The Guardian Angel." 



3i8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

"The Poet at the Breakfast-Table," in 187 1, and was not 
concluded until the conversations " Over the Teacups," in 1890. 

The range of topics cannot be better shown than by reference 
to the index — and the original edition was extraordinary in 
its day for having one. The "A's," for example, include abuse 
of all good attempts, affinities, and antipathies, age, animal 
under air-pump, the American a reenforced Englishman, the 
effect of looking at the Alps, the power of seeing analogies, 
why anniversaries are dreaded by the professor, the arguments 
which spoil conversation, the forming American aristocracy, 
the use of stimulants by artists, the effect of meeting one of 
heaven's assessors, and so on. The order in which they fall 
is hardly more casual than in the index. Witness the eleventh 
paper: puns, " TheDeacon^ Masterpiece," slang, dandies, 
aristocracy, intellectual greenfruit, Latmized diction (with the 
verses " ^Estivation "), seashore and mountains, summer resi- 
dences, space, the Alps, moderate wishes (with the verses 
"Contentment"), faithfulness in love, picturesque spots in 
Boston, natural beauties in a city, dusting a library, experi- 
encing life, a proposal of marriage. The difference between 
their structure and that of the formal essay is simply that they 
meander like a stream instead of following a predetermined 
course like a canal. 

In the later members of the series, and particularly in the 
third and fourth, there is an evident response to the current of 
nineteenth-century thinking. By nature Holmes was a libera l 
but n ot a reform er. He took no active part in " movements," 
though he sympathized with many of them and with the inten-. 
tions of their wiser promoters. At the same time he preferred 
for his own part to induce and persuade people into new paths 
rather than to shock and offend them while they were still 
treading the old ones. There is a note of considerate caution 
in his espousal of new ideas. He was the type of man -who 
will always be unsatisfactory to extremists, — a dangerous per- 
son to the hidebound conservative and a tentative trifler to the 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 319 

ultraradical. His open-mindednes s is charmingly demonstrated 
in the book of his old age, "' Over the Teacups." Few men 
of eighty succeed in keeping their eyes off the past and their 
voices from decrying the present, but^Holmes in his latest 
years was as interested in the developments of the day as he 
had been in the prime of life. 

The issues of the Civil War — to return from the tea table 
to the breakfast room — showed that Holmes had not lost the 
spark for righteous indignation in the thirty years since the 
writing of '' Old Ironsides." " The Statesman's Secret " was 
not as effective a protest at Webster's " Seventh of March 
Speech" (1850) as Whittier's " Ichabod," but it was quite as 
sincerely outspoken. " Non-Resistance " and '' The Moral Bully " 
prove that Holmes was as little of a peace-at-any-price man as 
Lowell. " Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline " 
was written in deep sorrow that the war had been precipitated, 
but " To Canaan " was militant to the highest degree. Two 
other poems, written in the years of the Autocrat and the 
Poet, both in lofty seriousness, came from "flowering moments 
of the mind " which lost fewest petals as they were recorded in 
verse. These were "' The Chambered Nautilus " and " A Sun- 
Day Hymn." 

In all HohngalS-ffiritingj^ whatever the mood or the form, 
the prevailing method is cumulative. rfels'lLEely to start with 
an idea,^ proceed to a simple a nalys is of it, and ex pound it by 
a single analogy elaborated at length or a whole series of them 
more briefly presented. In the sixth "Autocrat" paper he says, 
with some show of self-restraint, " There are some curious 
observations I should like to make . . . but I think we are 
getting rather didactic." Yet as a matter of fact Holmes's 
method JH aS- seldom any thin jg ; but didactic , and his content was 
frequently such. He evidently saw at a flash how to com- 
municate the idea, but, as he must have done hundreds of 
times in the classroom, he developed it with what was at once 
spontaneous and painstaking detail. His most famous satires, 



320 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

" My Aunt," " Contentment," and " The Deacon's Master- 
piece," are all illustrations of this method. Thus in his " Fare- 
well to Agassiz," before the naturalist left for South America, 
Holmes mentioned that the mountains were awaiting his 
approval, as were also five other natural objects. He wished 
the traveler safety from the tropical sun and twenty-two other 
dangers and that he might succeed in finding fossils and seven 
other things of interest. "' Bill and Joe " contains sixty lines 
built up by the enumerative method on the truth that worldly 
distinctions disappear for a moment in the light of college 
friendships. " Dorothy Q " devotes thirty-two lines to the 
quaint fancy " What would I be if one of my eight great, 
great grandmothers had married another man ? " and " The 
Broomstick Train" a hundred and forty-six Hnes to the con- 
ceit " The Salem Witches furnish the power for the trolley 
cars." In prose, as a final illustration, his well-known discus- 
sion of the typical lecture audience in the sixth " Autocrat " is 
about eight hundred words long : Audiences help formulate 
lectures. The average is not high. They are awful in their 
uniformity — like communities of ants or bees — whether in 
New York, Ohio, or New England — unless some special prin- 
ciple of selection interferes. They include fixed elements — in 
age (four) — and in intelligence (the dull elaborated) — making 
up a compound vertebrate (biological analogy). Kindly elements 
conceded, but on the whole depressing. 

Holmes^gave thg_fin al epithet to his novels when he referred 
to Jhem_aLS_" medicated." For the other and more eminent 
American physician. Weir Mitchell, fiction was a resort to 
another world, but the author of '" Elsie Venner" (1861), 
"The_Guarjdian..Angel" (1867), and "The Mortal Antipathy" 
(1885) was the ess ayist-physi cian extending the narrative process 
a little farther than in the conversational series. The plots 
were supplied by Dr. Holmes and developed by the Autocrat- 
Professor-Poet. Several chapters of medical lore were inter- 
polated in each book, and several more of genial exposition. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 32 1 

These latter are like the work of Mrs. Stowe except that their 
relation to story development is tenuous or imperceptible, and 
in characterization his successes, like Mrs. Stowe's, are with 
the homelier New England types. 

In the best sense of the word Holmes was a provincial^ 
New En^lan der. He was proud of the traditions of his dis- 
trict, devoted to its welfare, certain of its capacity for improve- 
ment, but sure of its contribution to the integrity of American 
character. Although he did not share the deeper enthusiasms 
of Emerson or even fully understand them, he had much more 
of the n iilk of. hum^ii ^tnrllie^Jl!.„lli]7' His " message " and 
his manner of delivering it were popular with the reading 
public. He was not a leader, but he kept up to the times, 
and he explained the drift of them to many who might not 
otherwise have perceived what was going on in the world or 
in themselves. In the tributes which came from every quarter 
after his death his gg mality was the highest common factor — 
a wholesome and Homely trait which will always be sure of 
affectionate regard in American literature. 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

Oliver Wendell Holmes. Riverside Edition, 13 vols. Prose, Vols. 
I-X; Poetry, XI-XIII. 1891. Standard Library Edition, 1892; 
Autocrat Edition, 1904; both 15 vols, (uniform with Riverside 
Edition, with added life by J. T. Morse as Vols. XIV and XV). The 
best single volume of poems is the Cambridge Edition, 1895. His 
work appeared in book form originally as follows: Poems, 1836; 
Boylston Prize Dissertations, 1838; Homeopathy, and its Kindred 
D^usions, 1842; Urania, 1846; Poems, 1849; Astrasa, 1850; The 
Autocrat of , the Breakfast- Table, 1858; The Professor at the 
Breakfast-Table, i860; Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical 
Science, 1861; Elsie Venner, 1861; Songs in Many Keys, 1862; 
Soundings from the Atlantic, 1864; Humorous Poems, 1865; The 
Guardian Angel, 1867; The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 1872; 
Songs oi Many -Seasons, 1875; John Lothrop Motley, 1879; The 
Ir on Gate . 1880; Medical Essays, 1883; Pages from, an Old Volume 
of Life, 1883; Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1885; A Mortal Antipathy, 



322 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

1885; Our Hundred Days in Europe, 1887; Be fore the Curf ew, 
and Other Poems, 1888; Over the Teacups, 1891. 

Bibliography 

A volume compiled by George B. Ives. 1907. Cambridge History of 
American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 540-543. 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by John T. Morse. 1896. 2 vols. 

Collins, Churton. The Poetry and Poets of America. ^ 

Cooke, G. W. Dr. Holmes at Fourscore. New England Magazine, 

October, 1889. 
Curtis, G. W. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Literary and Social Essays. 

1895. 
DviriGHT, Thomas. Reminiscences of Dr. Holmes as Professor of 

Anatomy. Scribner's, January, 1895. 
Fields, Annie. Personal Recollections and Unpublished Letters, 

in Authors and Friends. 1896. 
Gilder, Jeannette L. A Book and its Story, in The Genial '^Auto- 
crat.'''' Critic, May 9, 1896. 
Hale, E. E. An Afternoon with Dr. Holmes in Human Documents. 

1895. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Cheerful Yesterdays. 1898. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Contemporaries. 1899. 
HiGGiNSON, T. W. Old Cambridge. 1900. 
How^ELLS, W. D. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Harper's, December, 

1896. 
Ho WELLS, W. D. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Literary Friends and 

Acquaintances. 1900. 
Kennedy, W. S. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Poet, Litterateur, Scientist. 

1883. 
Lang, Andrew^. Adventures among Books. 1905. 
Lodge, H. C. Certain Accepted Heroes and Other Essays. 1897. 
Lowell, J. R. A Fable for Critics. 1848. 
Matthews, Brander. Cambridge History of American Literature. 

Vol. II, Bk. II, in chap, xxiii. 
Meynell, Alice. The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays. 1897. 
Richardson, C. F. American Literature, Bk. II, chap. vi. 1889. 
Stedman, E. C. Poets of America. 1885. 
Vincent, L. H. American Literary Masters. 1906. 
WooDBERRY, G. E. Nation, October 11, 1894. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read any one of Holmes's " Breakfast-Table " Series or any one 
of his novels for evidences of his prevailing belief in the virtues of 
an intellectual aristocracy. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 323 

Do the same thing with any of these seven books for the recur- 
rence of illustrations, allusions, or whole passages which only a 
physician would have been likely to write. 

Note in any of these books or in any selected group of his poems 
evidences of his respect for the broad contributions of science and 
*s; " scientific thought. 

V^ Read poems and passages of broadest jocosity and see if you find 
'' any wisdom intermixed with their ingenuity and their good nature. 

Compare the " society verse " of Holmes with that of Austin 
Dobson or Brander Matthews. 

Read at least a half-dozen poems of Holmes written in satire on 
contemporary men or movements and generalize on them as you can. 

Read " Poetry," " Urania," and " To my Readers " for Holmes's 
theory of the content and the purpose of poetry. Compare with the 
theory of some other American or English poet. 

Read " Elsie Venner," " The Guardian Angel," or " The Mortal 
Antipathy " and criticize it for its virtues and defects as a novel. 

Read " The Guardian Angel " for the autobiographical material 
discoverable in the character of Byles Gridley, 



CHAPTER XXII 

SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 

In the metropolitan group of the latter half of the 
nineteenth century Bryant was dominant until his death in 
1878. Other conspicuous representatives were Bayard Taylor 
(1825-1878), Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903), Edmund 
Clarence Stedman (i 833-1908), Thomas Bailey Aldrich 
( 1 836-1 907) in his early career, and — with a difference — 
Richard Watson Gilder (1844-1909). None of these men 
was born and brought up in New York, and none but Gilder 
partook of the nature of the town as Irving and even Bryant 
and Halleck had been able to do in the preceding generation 
when it was more compact and unified. Taylor clung to the 
idea of establishing a manorial estate at Kennett Square, 
Pennsylvania, but lived more or less in New York and buzzed 
restlessly about the literary market until he died a victim of 
overwork in 1878. Stoddard, more stable and unexcited than 
Taylor or than Stedman, was occupied in a succession of unin- 
spired literary ventures. Aldrich, after a few years, returned 
to Boston, where he was happier, although always consciously 
a newcomer. Stedman devoted as much time and energy to 
poetry as his unsuccessful efforts to become independently 
rich would allow him. These men were in a way the first 
American literary victims to " Newyorkitis." Only Richard 
Watson Gilder succeeded in coping with the great city. The 
others were not only unable to impress their stamp on the city 
of their adoption but were engulfed by it. In the midst of 
the turmoil they could not enjoy the serenity which prevailed in 
those same days in the Boston or the Charleston where cultural 
pursuits were held in higher esteem than commercial activity. 
324 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 325 

They were in the midst of a different cultural atmosphere. 
Bryant, Irving, Halleck, and Greeley led the way for a succeed- 
ing group of self-educated men. The New England writers 
of the day had been schooled at Harvard and Bowdoin and 
certain German universities, and the cultured men of Charles- 
ton were going abroad for study and travel in increasing num- 
bers. In the midst of all the hurly-burly of New York there 
was no dominant circle who were disposed to take time for 
the leisurely contemplation of the finer things in art and life, 
and the art and life of New York suffered in consequence. 
In spite of all that had been said for generations about the 
employment of American subject matter, these men turned 
away from either the romance or the realities of the town. 
Except in rare instances they did not even satirize it. Instead 
they took refuge in sentimentalism and in remote times and 
places. "' The Ballad of Babie Bell," " Ximen, or the Battle 
of the Sierra^ Morena, and Other Poems," " Poems of the 
Orient," "The Blameless Prince," " Poems Lyric and Idyllic," 
" Konigsmark, and Other Poems," " The King's Bell," and 
" The Book of the East " were the natural output of such a 
group. Moreover, the plays were of the same sort. " Tortesa 
the Usurer," '" The Merchant of Bogota," " Francesca da 
Rimini," and " Leonora, or the World's Own " represented 
the majority. '" Fashion " and " Rip Van Winkle " were quite 
the exceptions. 

Of his generation Stoddard was perhaps more devoted than 
any other in his worship of a fanciful and unvitalized Muse. 
The criticisms of Lowell and Holmes served as correctives 
for the artificialities of Stedman and Aldrich, but Stoddard 
made no poetic response either to the Civil War or to the 
march of science or to the religious changes that attended it. 
To the end of his career he was the complete product of the 
influences surrounding his youth. He had been brought to 
New York at the age of ten by his widowed mother and kept 



326 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

in school only until he was fifteen. For nine years he worked 
as an artisan, cultivating literature and literary people in his 
leisure hours. From 1853 to 1870 he held a post in the 
New York Customhouse, and from i860 on, literary editor- 
ships with the New York World, the Aldine and the New 
York Mail and Express. 

Stoddard's poetry is altogether detached from this life, ignor- 
ing or avoiding the facts of daily existence ; and even in the 
little lyrics of pleasure there is the lovely detachment of the 
orchid. Though now and again they show signs of becoming 
mildly erotic, they have no passion in them. Rather they 
exhibit the chaste delights of the virtuoso, who takes up one 
object after another from the glass-covered cabinets in the 
museum which his fancy has furnished, looks it over fondly, 
admires its form and color, and sets it back with even pulse 
until such time as he shall choose to gaze on it again. These 
lyrics are sometimes nature descriptions and sometimes nature 
fantasies. Often they are about the idea of love — rather than 
about love itself — and about wine — but not about conviviality. 
In the philosophical ones there is a negative tone, as in 

Man loses but the life he lives 
And only lives the life he loses. 
or in 

There is no life on land or sea 
Save jij the quiet moon and me ; 
Nor ours is true, but only seems 
Within some dead old World of Dreams. 

And this dream world was an abandoned unreality and not 
a hope for something better. 

Taken at its best, his verse is chiefly excellent for its form. 
As it does not spring from any vivid experiencing of life, it 
is conventional and rerniniscent rather than spontaneous and 
original. It suggests many measures from many periods. In 
only a few poems, which purport to be themselves imitations 
from the East, he writes what seems fresh and new. His real 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 327 

gift was in the composition of little poetic cameos, bits of 
from four to a dozen lines, the dainty ornaments of literature. 

The career of Thomas Bailey Aldrich was closely interwoven 
with the whole fabric of professional authorship in America. 
Like Bryant and Willis before him, and like Stedman, Stod- 
dard, and Winter of his own generation, he established himself 
in New York, although he was a New England boy ; but 
unlike all the others he fulfilled his career in Boston. It was 
an accident of dollars and cents that kept him out of Harvard 
and put him into a New York office. A love of literature led 
him then successively into the adventurous byways of Bohe- 
mian New York, the secure dignity of magazine editorship in 
Boston, and the fair prospects of independent literary success 
as enjoyed on Beacon Hill. 

To be explicit, he was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
in 1836. His father's pursuit of fortune took Aldrich as a 
child to many parts of the country, but brought him back to 
Portsmouth at the age of thirteen. For the next three years 
he lived there the life which provided the basic facts for 
" The Story of a Bad Boy." Lack of funds prevented his 
entering Harvard, and in 1852 he undertook a clerkship in 
the office of a New York uncle. In 1855, when he was still 
only nineteen, he published his first volume of poetry and 
became junior literary critic on the Evening Mirror. In the 
next several years he held a sub-editorship in New York on 
the Home Journal and the Saturday Press and- literary 
adviserships to several minor publishing houses, capping off 
with the editorship of the Illustrated News, which had 
become a thing of the past when, in 1866, he was called. to 
Boston to become editor of Every Saturday. This post he 
held for nine years. . For the six years up to 1881 he was an 
abundant contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and for the 
next nine, 1 881-1890, he was the editor, During the remain- 
der of his life he held no literary position.: 



328 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

During his fifteen years in New York, Greeley and Bryant, 
two newspaper editors, were perhaps the dominant figures in 
the literary and intellectual stratum, Willis and Halleck the 
most popular, Henry Clapp, Jr., and Charles T. Congdon the 
cleverest, and " Bohemia," with its rallying point at Pfaff' s 
restaurant, the visible rallying place for the authors.^ Aldrich 
gravitated toward this group, but never really belonged to it. 
Just why he did not can be inferred from a sentence by 
Howells, whose nature was very like his own : " I remember 
that, as I sat at that table, under the pavement, in Pfaff's beer- 
cellar, and listened to the wit that did not seem very funny, I 
thought of the dinner with Lowell, the breakfast with Fields, the 
supper at the Autocrat's, and felt that I had fallen very far." ^ 

The men who gathered at Pfaff's were very conscious of 
Boston, though their consciousness came out in various ways. 
The most violent said that the thought of it made them as 
ugly as sin ; others loved it though they left it, as Whitman did 
"the open road " ; and some, on the outskirts of " Bohemia," 
were not too aggressively like Stedman, who admitted much 
later, " I was very anxious to bring out my first book in New 
York in Boston style, having a reverence for Boston, which I 
continued to have." Aldrich was of like mind, and readily ac- 
cepted Osgood's invitation to " the Hub " and to the editorship 
of Every Saturday. Years after he wrote to Bayard Taylor, 
who could understand : " I miss my few dear friends in New 
York — but that is all. There is a finer intellectual atmosphere 
here than in our city. . . . The people of Boston are full-blooded 

1 For varying sentiments about " Bohemia " see the following passages : 
Ferris Greenslet, " Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich," pp. 37-47 ; W. D. Howells, 
" Literary Friends and Acquaintances," pp. 68-76 ; Stedman and Gould, " Life 
of Edmund Clarence Stedman," pp. 208, 209 ; William Winter, " Old Friends," 
pp. 291-297. ^ 

2 In reply to this and like passages William Winter wrote : " No literary 
circle comparable with the Boheniian group of that period, in ardor of genius, 
variety of character, and singularity of achievement, has since existed in New 
York, nor has any group of writers anywhere -existent in our country been so 
ignorantly and grossly misrepresented and maligned " (" Old Friends," p. 138). 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 329 

readers, appreciative, trained." And later, to Stedman : "In 
the six years I have been here, I have found seven or eight 
hearts so full of noble things that there is no room in them for 
such trifles as envy and conceit and insincerity. I did n't find 
more than two or three such in New York, and I lived there 
fifteen years. It was an excellent school for me — to get out 
of ! " Boston was his native heath, in spite of his own saying : 
" Though I am not genuine Boston, I am Boston-plated." 

Aldrich's literary career began and ended with the writing 
of poetry, but what he did in the interims of poetical silence 
contributed to the peculiar character of his work even though 
it was a source of distraction and sometimes of prolonged 
interruption. As a reader and editor he was schooled from 
very young manhood in the exercise of a peculiarly fine artistic 
taste, a taste so exacting in detail that the Atlantic under his 
direction was described by a foreign critic as " the best edited 
magazine in the English language." He did not reserve the 
exercise of this rectitude of judgment for the work of others, 
but applied it with perhaps increased austerity to himself. His 
verse will consequently endure close examination, and the later 
collections will show the virtues and defects of scrupulous 
rejection and of the revision in each succeeding publication 
of the work which he chose to preserve. 

The virtues of work so carefully perfected are evident. His 
effects are, in the end, all calculated, for he gave no quarter 
to what he had produced with zest if it did not ring true to 
his critical ear. His poetic machinery is therefore well oiled 
and articulated. His metaphors are sound and his diction 
happily adjusted. " The vanilla-flavored adjectives and the 
patchouli-scented participles " criticized by his kindly senior. 
Dr. Holmes, are pared away. So in the little steel engravings 
that are the best expressions of his peculiar talent there is 
a fine simplicity, but it is the simplicity of an accomplished 
woman of the world rather than of a village maid. And herein 
lie the shortcomings of Aldrich's poetry — that it is the poetry 



33© A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of accomplishment. As a youth in New York, writing while 
Halleck's popularity was at its height, he was not independent 
enough to be more original than his most admired townsman. 
The verses in " The Bells : a Collection of Chimes " are 
most of them clearly imitative ; and from the day of " Babie 
Bell " on, whatever of originality was Aldrich's belonged to 
the library and the drawing-room and the literary club rather 
than to the seas, woods, and mountains. 

It is logical, then, that his longer narrative poems have 
least of his own stamp in them. From a literary point of view 
they are well enough, but they are literary grass of the field 
and have no more claim on the primary attention of a modern 
reader than do the bulk of prose short stories written in the 
same years by Aldrich and his fellows. The only one that 
stands out is " Pauline Pavlovna," and that because it has the 
dramatic vigor and the startling unexpectedness of conclusion 
which mark the best of his prose tales. It is logical, too, that 
in his more ambitious odes — such as "Spring in New Eng- 
land " and the " Shaw Memorial Ode," which open and close 
the second volume of his poems — he did not appear to the 
best advantage. Memorials of the Civil War are adequate only 
if written with epic vision, but the best that Aldrich did with 
such material was to make it the ground for heartfelt tributes 
to the nobility of his fallen friends. Read Moody's " Ode in 
Time of Hesitation " beside Aldrich's slender lyric based on 
the same man and the same memorial, and the difference 
is self-evident. Aldrich's biographer has commented on the 
rarity of his aesthetic sense, "among modem poets with their 
preoccupations, philosophical, religious and political." In this 
not unjust criticism of Aldrich — which marks a distinction 
rather than a superiority — lies the reason why he should have 
left the writing of national odes to poets who were sometimes 
capable of such preoccupation. 

In writing on personal and local and occasional themes 
Aldrich dealt with more congenial material. When celebrating 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 331 

his fellow-authors and the places he loved he could invoke 
beauty with an unpreoccupied mind ; and he did so with 
unvarying success, addressing the choicest of the limited 
public in which he was really interested. The kind of folk 
he cared for " Drank deep of life, new books and hearts of 
men," like Henry Howard Brownell. As a youth he wrote 
delightedly of a certain month when he could see "her" 
every day and browse in a library of ten thousand volumes. 
He was a literary poet for literary people. As such he was 
most successful in poems which ranged in length from the 
sonnet to the quatrain. In the tiny bits like "Destiny," 
"Heredity," "Identity," "Memory," "I'll not confer with 
Sorrow," " Pillared Arch and Sculptured Tower," he achieved 
works as real as Benvenuto's jewel settings. It was a fulfill- 
ment of the wish recorded in his " Lyrics and Epics " : 

I would be the lyric 
Ever on the lip, 
Rather than the epic 
Memory lets slip. 
I would be the diamond 
At my lady's ear 
Rather than a June rose 
Worn but once a year. 

No more charming tribute was ever paid Aldrich than this 
of Whittier's narrated by a friend who had been visiting for a 
week with the poet in his old age : " Every evening he asked 
me to repeat to him certain short poems, often " Destiny," 
and once even 'that audacious "Identity,"' as he called it; 
but at the end he invariably said, * Now thee knows without 
my saying so that I want " Memory," ' and with his wonder- 
ful far-off gaze he always repeated after me : ' Two petals 
from that wild-rose tree.' " 

In his address at a meeting held in memory of Edmund 
Clarence Stedman in January, 1909, Hamilton Mabie struck the 



332 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

main note in two complementary statements : " Mr. Stedman 
belongs with those who have not only enriched literature with 
works of quality and substance, but who have represented it in 
its public relationships," and, " Stedman was by instinct and 
temperament a man of the town." He elected to live in Man- 
hattan just as deliberately as Aldrich elected to live in Boston ; 
and in this distinction lies something much broader than the 
mere difference between the two men. 

Stedman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1833. After 
the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother, he 
was brought up from 1839 to 1850 under charge of an uncle. 
A member of the class of 1853 at Yale, he was "rusticated" 
(see p. 282) and then expelled for persistent misbehavior. 
Until 1863 he was in journalism, as petty proprietor in two 
Connecticut towns, and later as member of the New York 
Tribune staff, ending with two years as war correspondent. In 
1863 he went into Wall Street, and in 1869 became a member 
of the New York Stock Exchange. From this date to the end 
of his life in 1908 he knew little real repose, oscillating from 
over-exertion in business to over-exertion in writing, with occa- 
sional enforced vacations. His work as poet was inseparable 
from his labors as editor and critic. In this field he wrote 
" Victorian Poets," 1875, " Poets of America," 1885, and " The 
Nature and Elements of Poetry," 1892; and edited the 
■' Library of American Literature " (with Ellen Hutchinson) 
1888-1889, "A Victorian Anthology," 1895, and "An Amer- 
ican Anthology," 1900. 

Stedman took the consequences of settling in the commercial 
capital of the United States. While the members of the Satur- 
day Club were lending distinction to Boston, the members or ' 
the Ornithorhyncus Club and the Bohemians were receiving the 
impress of New York. Men came to the Saturday luncheons 
from Salem and Haverhill, Concord, and Cambridge as well as 
iiear-by Brookhne and Boston itself, but the New York groups 
congregated into literary neighborhoods in the " Unitary Home " 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 333 

or "on the south side of Tenth Street." Thus it came about 
that Aldrich contributed to Boston what he brought there, but 
that Stedman was "made in New York." As a result Aldrich 
was more frankly absorbed in the concerns of the enlightened 
reader, and Stedman relatively more interested in a broader 
society. Both were war correspondents, but Aldrich admitted 
the war into his poetry only rarely, and then without much 
success. On the other hand, the first eighth of Stedman 's col- 
lected poems are entitled " In War Time," and with the poems 
of Manhattan, of New England, and of special occasions amount 
to nearly one half the volume. Moreover, of the poems by 
Stedman which are generally known and quoted, quite the 
larger portion are included in utterances which are representative 
of literature " in its public relationships." 

A timely admonition from Lowell, as valuable as the one 
from Holmes to Aldrich, helped keep him out of the byways 
in which he was inclined to stray. In 1866 Stedman was 
proud of his "Alectryon," a blank-verse poem on a classic 
theme which had appeared in one of his books three years before. 

When Mr. Lowell praised the volume in The North American Review 
I was chagrined that he did not allude to vay pihce de resistance, and 
■finally hinted as much to him. He at once said that it was my " best 
piece of work," but " no addition to poetic literature," since we already 
have enough masterpieces of that kind — from Lander's " Hamadryad" 
and Tennyson's " CEnone " down to the latest effort by Swinburne or 
Mr. Fields. So I have never written since upon an antique theme. 
Upon reflection, I thought Lowell right. A new land calls for new song. 

The best of Stedman's nature poems are directly drawn from 
boyhood reminiscence or from a voyage and vacation in the 
West Indies, and many of his songs and ballads are derived 
from contemporary backgrounds and episodes. 

Stedman did his work as a poet, however, in full conscious- 
ness of all the wealth of continental literature and the splendors 
of Old World tradition. Perhaps there was no single work into 
which he put more ambition than into his uncompleted metrical 



334 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

version from the Greek of the Sicihan IdylHsts. His " Vic- 
torian Poets " and the anthology which followed were undertaken 
by way of making a workmanlike approach to the poetry of his 
own countrymen. As a reader he had the scholar's attitude 
toward literature ; as a poet he felt a respect approaching rev- 
erence for the established traditions of his art. And yet — and 
in this respect Stedman is lamentably rare among critics and 
artists — his conviction that the centuries had achieved perma- 
nent canons for the poetic art did not lead him into slashing 
abuse of those who dissented from his views. He wrote no 
single essay which better demonstrated his wisdom, his sanity, 
and his charming suavity of mind and manner than his dis- 
cussion of Walt Whitman. Although he felt a native distaste 
for much of Whitman's writing and for the way most of it 
was done, he succeeded in applying a fair mode of criticism, 
and he did it in the manner of an artist and not as a counsel 
for the plaintiff. Instead of beginning with cleverness and end- 
ing with truculence Stedman did himself the honor of coming 
out magnanimously with "... there is something of the Greek 
in Whitman, and his lovers call him Homeric, but to me he 
shall be our old American Hesiod, teaching us works and days." 
The measure of Stedman's poetry should therefore be made in 
the light of two characteristics : his instinctive and tempera- 
mental love of the town, as this determined his choice of subject 
matter, and his widely read appreciation of the older poets, as 
this affected his sense of artistic form. 

Although some of it was very popular at the moment and not 
altogether negligible to-day, his less important work was the 
succession of verses which were written in the spirit and, in 
some cases, at the speed of the journalist. "The Diamond 
Wedding," for example, was done in an evening and was the 
talk- of the town thirty-six hours later. But, more than that, it 
was actually good satire, — as good a piece of its kind as had 
appeared in New York since Halleck's " Fanny." So, too, 
"Israel Freyer's Bid for Gold " was published three days after 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 335 

the idea had first occurred to him. These, Hke the " Ballad of 
Lager Bier" and "The Prince's Ball" and even "How Old 
Brown Took Harper's Ferry" represented the high spirit of 
youth rollicking on paper in the fashion of the young authors 
of the " Salmagundi " and " Croaker " satires. 

" Bohemia " and " Pan in Wall Street," though composed in 
this same general period, are far more sober, deliberate, and 
genuinely poetical. In both Stedman dealt with the romantic 
rather than with the ridiculous or contemptible in city life. 
From the years of his work on " The Victorian Poets " to the 
end two developments took place. He inclined more to refine 
on the form of his poems, giving over at last all fluent satire, 
and he progressed in subject matter, first to what literature and 
the past suggested and then, with advancing years, to consider- 
ations of age and death. The changes are not abrupt, but they 
are pervasive and evident. 

During the last dozen years of his life poetry could not be 
his natural form of expression, for the world was too much with 
him. A great deal of the time when he was not getting or 
losing on Change (he seems to have lost rather more than he 
spent) he devoted to service on all sorts of boards and councils 
of good works, speaking and versifying for special occasions, 
editing miscellaneously, — even a "Pocket Guide to Europe," 
— and giving advice and encouragement to younger poets. He 
was admirably representing literature in its public relationships 
and paying the price which is always exacted of an ambassador 
of any sort in the complete sacrifice of independent leisure. 
There is something pathetic in his oft-repeated protests in these 
latter years at being called a " banker-poet " or " broker-poet," 
for he had failed to become rich as he had hoped, and he had 
enjoyed on the whole less security than many of his acquaint- 
ances who had attached themselves to literature in some pro- 
fessional way. This, however, had been a mistake not so much of 
judgment as of temperament. Unless his voluminous biography 
utterly misrepresents him he had no true capacity for leisure. 



336 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

He was an intellectual flagellant ; and his poetry, although he 
was in theory devoted to it, was in reality a proof of the love 
of art which continually tantalized and distracted him but never 
won his complete allegiance. 

Richard Watson Gilder was born in Bordentown, New Jersey, 
in 1844, He studied there in Bellevue Seminary, founded by 
his father, intending to practice law. He was in brief active 
service during the war when Pennsylvania was invaded. On 
his father's death he entered journalistic work, first with two 
Newark newspapers and then with Hours at Home in New 
York, From its founding in 1870 he was associate editor of 
the old Scribners Monthly (since 1881 The Century) and from 
1 88 1 was its editor in chief. He became increasingly important 
in New York as contributor to civic welfare, and at the same 
time held his own as editor and poet. Thus he was first presi- 
dent of the Kindergarten Association of New York and a 
founder of the Authors' Club. He was identified with the lead- 
ing agencies for cultural and humanitarian ends, was in demand 
as laureate on special occasions, and was recipient of many 
honorary degrees. 

Gilder was almost exclusively a lyric poet. His units are very 
brief, — there are more than five hundred in the one-volume 
"Complete" edition, — very few extending to the one hun- 
dred lines' ordained by Poe. Even among lyrics, moreover, he 
set distinct boundaries to his field. Among his metropolitan 
fellows — Taylor, Stoddard, Aldrich, Stedman, and the others 
— he was notable in not writing imitative and reminiscent 
poetry. These men must have been rather definitely in the 
back of his mind when he wrote : 

Some from books resound their rhymes — 

Set them ringing with a faint, 

Sorrowful, and sweet, and quaint 
Memory of the olden times, 
Like the sound of evening chimes. 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 337 

And too many of his contemporaries did not follow as well as 
he the admonition, 

Tell to the wind 
Thy private woes, but not to human ear. 

There was still a world of beauty left for him, first of all in 
songs of love. It is a chaste and disembodied passion that he 
celebrated in frequent groups of song. The lady is a delight 
to the eye, modest, timid, and yet all-generous ; the lover 
eager, gentle, adoring, and inspired to nobility. What Gilder 
recorded in one of the earliest of these lyrics seems in large 
measure to hold true of them all. After an enumeration of 
the lady's charms and the charm she bestowed upon earth 
and sky, he continued : 

I love her doubting and anguish ; 

I love the love she withholds ; 
I love my love that loveth her 

And anew her being molds. 

A poet of so rarefied a sentiment as this hangs on the brink 
of sentimentalism, but Gilder seldom fell over, for his nicety 
of feeling could not easily be led into mawkishness. 

His regard for nature was refined and sophisticated. One 
passes from the exquisite "" Dawn " with which his first volume 
opened, past " Thistle-Down " and " The Violet " to the poems 
of Tyringham, his summer home ; and then to "' Home Acres" 
and " The Old Place," which had no rival ; and ends " In 
Helena's Garden " between " The Marble Pool " and " The 
Sundial," to drink tea with eleven pretty girls at a round table 
made from a granite millstone. The sun shines brightly, the 
flowers are in bloom, their odor mingling with that of the 
souchong, the conversation is facile, and everybody is amiable 
and complacent. From such a catalogue one might expect 
sappy and emasculated nature poems, but once again Gilder's 
sanity rescues him. Even in Helena's garden he is rather a 
strong man at ease than a sybarite. 



338 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

In his enjoyment of the allied arts his taste was generous. 
Music appealed to him most of all. He chanted the praises 
of Handel and Chopin, Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky, but of 
Beethoven still more, and of Wagner most of all. He told of the 
thrill he caught from the various instruments, but of the deeper 
thrill from the singer and from the chorus. The art of 
" Madame Butterfly " appealed to him, but not so deeply as 
the power of the drama, even if played " In a little theater, 
in the Jewry of the New World." Naturally he wrote much 
of his own art, revealing his high seriousness in his poems 
about the poet. Poetry was not solely the record or the evi- 
dence of beauty for him. Although his only markedly personal 
allegiance in poetry was an allegiance to Keats, it was a fealty 
to Keats taken off before his prime. Gilder lamented the 
wrong fate had done the youthful genius and did not content 
himself with reiterating that " a thing of beauty is a joy forever." 

For Gilder never, even in his most ecstatic moods, indulged 
in the fallacy of setting art above life. Though his work does 
not show the marked changes which have developed in many 
evolving careers, there is a clear emergence of philosophic 
and then social and civic interest in his progressive volumes. 
His sense for the need of a brave integrity comes to the sur- 
face in such poems as " Reform," " The Prisoner's Thought," 
"The Heroic Age," "The Demagogue," "The Tool," "The 
New Politician," "The Whisperers," and "In Times of 
Peace." To such themes as these and to his poems of hero- 
ism and of the reunited country Gilder brought the same 
delicacy of touch as to his poems of love and art and nature, 
and he brought into view in them the latent vigor which 
saved the others from being merely pink and mellifluous. 

In poetry written on the scale of Gilder's there is need of 
finest workmanship. There is no chance for Turneresque 
effects : 

The foreground golden dirt, 
The sunshine painted with a squirt. 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 339 

These paintings are like miniatures which must submit to 
scrutiny under the reading glass. In this connection his crafts- 
manship becomes interesting in the history of versification. 
For Gilder was at once a master of the more complex forms 
of traditional verse and an early experimenter in the free, 
rhythmic forms which are the subject of spirited controversy 1 
to-day. Some rhythmic prose appears in his earliest volume, ' 
but the sonnet prevails at the beginning of his authorship, and 
at the end it almost utterly disappears in favor of the freest sort 
of blank verse, irregular and unrimed iambic measures, poems 
which are suggestive of but distinct from Whitman's, and frank 
prose-poetry, not even " shredded prose " — in the language of 
Mr. Howells — but printed in solid paragraphs. Except for the 
sonnet. Gilder had no favorite measure or stanza in his earlier 
volumes. Few poems are in exactly similar measures. There 
are lines of from three to seven feet, quatrains of various sorts, 
and rhythms from that of the heroic couplet to that of the 
so-called Pindaric ode. But whatever the measure he adopted, 
he was scrupulously consistent to it, though he employed it 
easily, seldom conceding an awkward or prosaic locution to 
the exigencies of lilt or rime. So he seems to have been 
equally at home in the use of sundry forms — in the antiph- 
onal ballad like " The Voyager," within the pale of " The 
Sonnet," in the anapaestic flow of "A Song of Early Autumn," 
in the swift-moving iambics of "A Woman's Thought," with its 
intricate double and triple rimes, or in the psalmlike sibilations 
of " The Whisperers." 

The philosophy of Gilder was the philosophy of his most en- 
lightened contemporaries. There is in it much of Emerson, 
whom he called the "shining soul" of the New World, and 
there is much of Whitman, though it is not clear whether their 
likeness does not lie in their common accord with Emerson 
rather than in a direct influence from ''the good gray poet" 
to Gilder. The immanence of God in nature and in the heart 
of man (see " The Voice of the Pine ") ; the unity of all natural 



340 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

law (see " Destiny ") ; the conflict between religion and theology 
(see " Credo ") ; and a faith in the essentials of democratic life, 
— these are the wholesome fundamentals of modern thinking 
shared alike by Emerson and Whitman and Gilder. Gilder is 
not their most impressive or prophetic expositor. He is a lesser 
voice in the choir. The point of real distinction for him is 
that he combined so finely the discriminating work of a literary 
editor with the unwearying life of a good and courageous 
citizen and still kept the current of his song serene and clear. 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Authors 

Richard Henry Stoddard. Works. Complete Poems, i vol. His 
verse appeared in book form originally as follows : Footprints, 1 849 ; 
Poems, 1852; Songs of Summer, 1857; The King's Bell, 1862; 
Abraham Lincoln : an Horatian Ode, 1865 ; The Book of the East, 
and Other Poems, 1871 ; The Lion's Cub, with Other Verse, i8go. 

Collections 

BoYNTON, Percy H. American Poetry, pp. 542-554, 680-684. 
Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 

VIII, pp. 226-238. 

Biography 

Recollections Personal and Literary, by Richard Henry Stoddard. 
Ripley Hitchcock, editor. 1903. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Works. The Writings of , in 9 vols. 1907. 
(Vols. I-II, Poetry; Vols. III-IX, Prose.) The best single volume 
of the poetry is Poems. 1906. His works appeared in book form 
originally as follows: The Bells, 1855; The Ballad of Babie Bell, 
1856; Daisy's Necklace, 1857; Pampinea and Other Poems, 1861; 
Out of his Head, 1862; The Story of a Bad Boy, 1869; Marjorie 
Daw, and Other People, 1873; Prudence Palfrey, 1874; Cloth of 
Gold, 1874; Flower and Thorn, 1876; The Queen of Sheba, 1877; 
The Stillwater Tragedy, 1880; From Ponkapog to Pesth, 1883; 
Mercedes, and Later Lyrics, 1883; Wyndham Towers, 1889; The 
Sisters' Tragedy, 1891 ; Two Bites at a Cherry, 1893 ; An Old Town 
by the Sea, 1893 ; Unguarded Gates, and Other Poems, 1895 ; Later 
Lyrics, 1 896 ; Judith and Holofernes, 1 896. 
Collection 

Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. 

IX, pp. 377-399- 



SOME METROPOLITAN POETS 341 

Bibliography 

A chronological list of Aldrich's works is appended to the Life. See 
Biography, below. 

Biography 

The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich is by Ferris Greenslet. 1908. See 
also The Story of a Bad Boy, by Aldrich himself. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman. Works. The Poems of. igo8. These 
appeared in book form originally as follows: The Prince's Ball, 
i860; Poems Lyrical and Idyllic, i860; The Battle of Bull Run, 
1 861 ; Alice of Monmouth, 1863 ; The Blameless Prince, and Other 
Poems, 1869; Victorian Poets, 1875 ; Hawthorne and Other Poems, 
1877; Poets of America, 1885; The Nature and Elements of 
Poetry, 1892; A Victorian Anthology, 1895 ; An American Anthol- 
ogy j 1900; Mater Coronata, 1901. 

Bibliography 

An excellent chronological list is contained in Vol. II of the Life. 
Biography 

The Life and Letters is by Laura Stedman and George M. Gould. 
1910. 2 vols. See also A New England Childhood: the Story of 
the Boyhood of Edmund Clarence Stedman. Margaret Fuller. 19 16. 

Richard Watson Gilder. Works. The Poems of. Household 
Edition. 1 908. These appeared in book form originally as follows : 
The New Day, 1875; The Celestial Passion, 1878; Lyrics, 1878; 
The Poet and his Master, and Other Poems, 1878; Two Worlds, 
and Other Poems, 1891; Great Remembrance, and Other Poems, 
1893; For the Country, 1897; In Palestine and Other Poems, 
1898; Poems and Inscriptions, 1901; A Christmas Wreath, 1903; 
In the Heights, 1905 ; A Book of Music, 1906; Fire Divine, 1907; 
Lincoln the Leader, 1909; Grover Cleveland, 1910. 

Collection 

Stedman and Hutchinson. Library of American Literature, Vol. X, 
pp. 252-259. 

Biography 

Letters of Richard Watson Gilder. Rosamond Gilder, editor. 1906. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the biographical passages cited in the text relative to the 
difference of literary atmosphere in New York and Boston. Read 
W. D. Howells's "A Hazard of New Fortunes " for a further contrast 
between the two cities. 



342 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Read Stoddard's poems with a view to marking definite literary 
influences as shown in poems which seem evidently imitative. 

Read a group of the four-line and eight-line poems of Aldrich and 
compare them in spirit and execution with similar bits by Stoddard 
and by Emerson. 

Read Stedman's critical essays on one or two of the New England 
poets and on two or three of his fellow New Yorkers, Read his 
essay on Walt Whitman. Does Stedman's own verse confirm the 
theory of his criticisms of Whitman.? 

Read Gilder's poems in the newer verse forms and compare them 
with one of the contemporary poets mentioned in the last chapter 
of this book. 

Is there a legitimate connection to be mentioned between Gilder's 
poems on civic themes and the movement for better citizenship in 
the 1890's? Can you cite political events and characters and novels 
or plays on political life which belong to this period .? 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 

The non-mention of any Southern writers for nearly two 
centuries in a history of American literature is likely to mis- 
lead the unthinking reader. Certain qualifying facts should 
be reckoned with in drawing any deductions. The first and 
most specific is that Poe, although born in Boston and largely 
active in Philadelphia and New York, belongs to the South. 
His poems and tales are without time and space, but his 
criticisms are often vigorously sectional ; yet he was really an 
isolated character, speaking for himself without associates 
or disciples. 

For the comparative withdrawal of the South during a long 
period from the writing and publishing of poems, essays, and 
stories, there are two main reasons. One is the general nature 
of the early settlement (see pp. 3, 4, 6). The spread of the 
population over a wide area and the consequent lack of large 
towns gave no encouragement to printers and publishers before 
the Revolution and furnished no such gathering places as 
Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Literature, like all the 
other arts, thrives best in fellowship. With the Revolution 
and after it the richest culture of the South devoted itself to 
statesmanship and expressed itself in oratory. John Adams, 
governmental specialist, regretted that he had no leisure for 
the arts (see p. 69), but Thomas Jefferson, his successor in 
the White House, was a creative educator, a linguist, an 
architect, and not unversed in music. Southern gentlemen 
from the days of Jefferson and Madison to those of Abraham 
Lincoln read " Mr. Addison " and " Mr. Steele " and " Mr. 
Pope," fashioned their speech and writing. after those courtly 
343 



344 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

models, and, when they wrote at all, circulated their efforts 
among friends, not submitting them to the sordid touch of 
the publisher. 

Moreover, the literary consciousness of the South is shown 
in the history of the American theater. The earliest perform- 
ances of which there is record were given on Southern estates 
in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. The Hallam 
company of players, arriving from England in 1752, secured 
their first hearmg in Maryland and Virginia. Smaller Southern 
communities held their own with New York and Philadelphia 
in the patronage of the stage, while surviving Puritan preju- 
dice made New England an arid field for the drama until 
well into the next century. Again, the founding of the 
University of Virginia, preeminent though not the oldest 
among Southern colleges, was a doubly important event in 
American education, for it was first among state universities, 
with a curriculum recognizing the demands of citizenship, and 
it was unique in the beauty of its housing. Finally, journalism 
was not neglected in the South, keeping pace with the progress 
in the rest of the country ; and the Southern Literary Messenger 
(18 34-1 865) held an enviable place among American period- 
icals during its thirty years of life. 

From 1850 the natural course of events in the South began 
to develop literary centers, of which Charleston, South Carolina, 
was the most notable. At this date William Gilmore Simms 
(1 806-1 870) was in the high prime of life and was the 
unchallenged leader by virtue of age, literary achievement, 
and force of personality. He had appeared before the public 
with two volumes of poems in 1827, without foregoing poetry 
had gone on to prolific writing of adventure stories, and had 
produced at the rate of more than a book a year. He was an 
aboundingly vigorous, somewhat turbulent man, with a stimu- 
lating gift for talk and a very generous interest in all men of 
literary feeling and especially in younger aspirants. Around 
him and John Russell, the bookseller, there gathered by social 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 345 

gravitation a group who became for Charleston what the 
frequenters of the Old Corner Book Store were to Boston 
and rather more than what the " Bohemians " of Pfaff' s 
restaurant were to New York. Russell's became a rendezvous 
for the best people during the daytimes — perhaps to buy, 
perhaps only to talk — and in the evenings the men gathered 
in the spirit of a literary club, though without organization or 
name. Russell's Magazine was the natural fruit of the group- 
spirit thus engendered, just as the Atlantic Monthly (see p. 288) 
was of similar associations in Boston or as the Dial had been 
of the Transcendental Club in 1840 (see p. 195). 

It was a further consequence of this plowing of the cul- 
tural soil that two Charleston boys born in 1829 and 1830 
were encouraged as young men not only to write but to 
publish their poems and that one became the first editor and 
the other a frequent contributor to the local periodical. These 
were Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne. Of the two 
friends, somewhat as in the case of Halleck and Drake, 
Timrod, the one who showed promise of finer things, was 
the victim of an early death. As a youth he was given to the 
introspective seriousness and the grave extravagances of the 
growing poet — characteristics which are not wholly sacrificed 
in the grown poet, as they are in the average " sensible " man. 
His inclination to extol emotion as an end in itself, however, 
was fostered by a native hospitality toward sentimentalism for 
which there was little to correspond in the more prosaic North. 
In fact "the susceptibility of early feeling" which Irving 
wished to keep alive (see p. 126) and which was the central 
thread in Jane Austen's " Sense and Sensibility " was, and 
still is, a cue to certain prevailing Southern traits. Whatever 
may have been the origin of Southern speech and manners, 
they have continued in some measure to resemble those which 
we associate with English literature of the mid-eighteenth 
century. Both have a touch of courtly formality, a tendency 
toward the oratorical style, an explicit insistence on honor and 



346 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

chivalry, a display of deference to womanhood and to all 
beauty, and both are in constant danger from the insincerity 
which besets a speech or a literature which relies on conventional 
phrasing until the original locutions lose their original vitality.^ 
Timrod as a youthful versifier passed through his period 
of unconvincing extravagance, and even in his earlier work 
showed by occasional flashes that he had his own gift for 
expression as well as a receptive mind for poetry. In 1859 
his first book of poems was published. It had the coveted 
distinction of the Ticknor and Fields, Boston, imprint, but it 
was indubitably the utterance of a Charleston poet. The sonnet 
" I know not why, but all this weary day " is full of genuine 
feeling, and in its ominous despair foretells the coming war : 

Now it has been a vessel losing way, 
Rounding a stormy headland ; now a gray 
Dull waste of clouds above a wintry main ; 
And then, a banner, drooping in the rain, 
And meadows beaten into bloody clay, 

Timrod's two greater poems were dedicated to the Con- 
federacy. They are the outpourings of loyalty to the shortlived 
nation, full of passion, no freer from hate and recrimination 
than the average poems from the North, but positive in their 
ardent faith in the beneficent part the Confederacy was to 
play in future history. Like all other war poets he suffered 
from the embittering effects of the conflict. His first inclination 
was to think more about his hopes for the South than about 
his hatred of the North ; yet even in '' The Cotton Boll " and 
in " Ethnogenesis " he saw red at times, as any human partisan 
was bound to do. The newly federated South was to send 
out from its whitened fields an idealized cotton crop that 
" only bounds its blessings by mankind." The labors of the 

1 A corresponding danger on the other hand is that a people who abjure all 
such phrases will abjure also the things for which they stand, until they 
become irredeemably prosaic and matter of fact. 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 347 

planter were to strengthen the sinews of the world. Yet into 
this finely altruistic mood came the acrid thought of the war 
which was in progress, and in a moment he was vilifying the 
" Goth " in the same breath that he was resolving to be 
merciful, Timrod endured without flinching as an individual. 
As a confederate patriot he dreamed 

Not only for the glories which the years 

Shall bring us ; not for lands from sea to sea, 

And wealth, and power, and peace, though these shall be ; 

But for the distant peoples we shall bless, 

And the hushed murmurs of a world's distress. 

But when the war was over, in his '' Address to the Old Year " 
(1866) he was all for complete and speedy reconciliation. 

A time of peaceful prayer, 

Of law, love, labor, honest loss and gain — 
These are the visions of the coming reign 

Now floating to them on this wintry air. 

Fortunately, in the slow approach toward this millennial con- 
clusion Timrod was spared the brutal blunders of the Recon- 
struction period, for he died within the next twelvemonth, 
serene in his hopes. 

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886), a man of moderate 
talents and of achievement that was greater in bulk than 
quality, was whole-heartedly devoted to literature. With the 
founding of Russell's, while the bookseller supplied the capital 
and Simms the general stimulus, Hayne was the obviously 
willing and capable young man to carry the editorial routine. 
If the war had not cut short the life of the magazine within 
three years, Hayne might have fulfilled a long and useful 
career in its guidance. Moreover, the kind of criticism to 
which his work would have accustomed him might have 
refined his own verse and reduced its quantity as it did for 
Aldrich and Gilder. But a career like theirs was denied him 



348 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

when RusselVs was discontinued, and he was forced into the 
precarious existence of Hving by his pen without the assurance 
of any regular salary. Though this may be a sordid detail, it 
is not a negligible one, for the lack of a certain income not 
only disturbs the artist's mind but goads him to writing for 
monetary rather than artistic ends. This result is apparent in 
Hayne's work. He had to force himself, and he wrote in 
consequence the only kind of poetry that industry and good 
will can produce. 

Much of it was for special occasions. He wrote on demand 
for everything, from art exhibits to cotton expositions, always 
conscientiously without any special lightness or felicity. He 
fell into the conventional nineteenth-century habit of writing 
on romantic subjects' located in parts of the earth which he 
knew only from other men's poetry. His best work, of course, 
sprang more directly from his experience. Some of his 'war 
lyrics are stirring, though seldom up to Timrod's best. Some 
of his protests after the war are spirited and wholly justified by 
the stupid clumsiness of Northern control. '" South Carolina to 
the States of the North " and " The Stricken South to the 
North " suggest in verse what Page's " Red Rock " and 
Tourgee's "A Fool's Errand" present through the detail of 
extended novels, Hayne's tributes to other poets, particularly 
to Longfellow and Whittier, are full of generous admiration, 
and his nature poems ring finely true. Most of all the Southern 
pine fascinated him by its perennial grace and strength and 
its mysterious voice. A pine-tree anthology could be culled 
from his verse. 

To be the poet of a class or a district and no more than 
that is ordinarily not a notable achievement, but the fact that 
they represented an epoch as well as a section emphasizes 
the significance of Timrod , and Hayne. They were products 
of freshly stimulating conditions in the South ; before the 
war they began to sing for a neighborhood that had long been 
comparatively silent. And when the war came on, and after 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 349 

its conclusion, they were not only its best singers but they 
were remarkable in war literature for the fineness of their 
positive spirit and their relative freedom from abusive rancor. 
They reaped in love and praise the reward that their impoverished 
constituency could not pay them in money. 

Sidney Lanier was born in Macon, Georgia, in 1842. He 
was therefore twelve or thirteen years younger than Hayne 
or Timrod, and his productive period was correspondingly 
later, namely, in the 70's. He could trace his Lanier ancestry 
back to the court musicians of the Stuarts, and beyond them 
to a conjectured past in France. His mother sang and played 
in the home, and his father, a courtly and refined lawyer, was 
a "gentle reader " of the old Southern school. Macon was a 
town of extreme orthodoxy where " the only burning issues 
were sprinkling versus immersion, freewill versus predestina- 
tion," but where the rigors of Calvinism were mollified by 
innocent merrymaking and the amenities of Southern hospital- 
ity. From here Lanier went, in 1857, to Oglethorpe University 
as a member of the sophomore class, graduating from the 
modest college with first honors in i860. Though successful 
in scholarship, he had found his chief enjoyments in wide 
reading of romantic literature and in flute-playing. He was 
convinced that his talents were in music, but his strong ethical 
bias led him to check them because he could not satisfactorily 
answer the question. What is the province of music in the 
economy of the world ? On his appointment as tutor at 
Oglethorpe he decided to remain in college-teaching, rounding 
out his preparation by two years at Heidelberg. When the 
war broke he seemed to be well started on the path trod by 
Longfellow and Lowell. 

In " Tiger Lilies," his early romance, he described how the 
"afflatus of war" swept the South as it sweeps any land in 
the first hours of decision. " Its sound mingled with the 
serenity of the church organs and arose with the earnest 



3SO A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

words of preachers praying for guidance in the matter. It 
sighed in the half-breathed words of sweethearts, conditioning 
impatient lovers with war services. It thundered splendidly in 
the impassioned words of orators to the people. It whistled 
through the streets, it stole into the firesides, it clinked glasses 
in barrooms, it lifted the gray hairs of our wise men in con- 
ventions, it thrilled through the lectures in college halls, it 
rustled the thumbed book leaves of the schoolrooms, ... It 
offered tests to all allegiances and loyalties, — of church, of 
state ; of private loves, of public devotion ; of personal consan- 
guinity, of social ties." In 1861 Lanier enlisted in the first 
Georgia regiment to leave for the front. Four years later he 
returned with health permanently impaired by the hardships 
of service and of a prison camp. 

Even though wrecked in health, he came out from the war 
saddened but not embittered, and convinced as early as 1867 
that the saving of the Union had been worth the ordeal. His 
insistence that hatreds should be buried was maintained in face 
of every influence to the contrary. The countryside had been 
devastated and business brought to a stop. Libraries had 
been destroyed and colleges closed. As recuperation began 
the magnanimous influence of Lincoln waned, and the reign 
of the " carpetbaggers " inflamed the worst elements in the 
South, drove some of the better in despair to other parts of 
the country, and reduced the rest to bruised and heartsick 
indignation. Lanier could not be unaffected by such conditions. 
He took refuge in grinding work : first in teaching and then 
in several years of law practice in the examination of title 
deeds. "Tiger Lilies " was published in 1867 by Hurd and 
Houghton in New York, and a number of poems were printed 
there in the Roimd Table during 1867 and 1868. But depres- 
sion and drudgery tended to silence him, and might have done 
so if the music in him had succumbed with the poetry and if 
the poetry had not been revived by the stimulating friendships 
of two older men, Paul. Hamilton, Hayne.and Bayard Taylon 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 351 

Music gained a new hold on him during an enforced health 
trip to Texas in the winter of 1 872-1 873. He had reveled 
in the concerts he had heard in different visits to New York 
after the war, but in San Antonio he fell in with a group of 
musicians for whom he was a player as well as an auditor. 
Without any formal instruction in the flute he had achieved 
such a command of the instrument that it had become a second 
voice for him. In the autumn of '73 he met and played for 
Hamerick, Director of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in 
Baltimore, and in December he went in triumph to his initial 
rehearsal as first flutist in the newly organized Peabody Sym- 
phony Orchestra. For the rest of his life music was his most 
reliable means of support and a source of pleasure that 
amounted to little less than dissipation. As a performer he 
was in great demand for extra local engagements, from which 
he seemed to gain quite as much enjoyment as he gave — for 
he played in a kind of ecstasy ; he " felt in his performance 
the superiority of the momentary inspiration to all the rules 
and shifts of mere technical scholarship." As an auditor, 
whether of his own music or that rendered by others, his 
appreciation was almost wholly sensuous, an experience of 
raptures, thrills, and swooning joys. " Divine lamentations, 
far-off blowings of great winds, flutterings of tree and flower 
leaves and airs troubled with wing-beats of birds or spirits ; 
floatings hither and thither of strange incenses and odors and 
essences ; warm floods of sunlight, cool gleams of moonlight, 
faint enchantments of twilight ; delirious dances, noble marches, 
processional chants, hymns of joy and grief : Ah, midst all 
these I lived last night, in the first chair next to Theodore 
Thomas' orchestra." From such a comment one is prepared 
for frequent references to the more modern composers, few 
to Beethoven, and none at all to Bach and Brahms ; and one 
is helped to understand also the mistakenly limited dictum — 
too often quoted — that " Music is love in search of a word." 
Music was immensely important in Lanier's emotional life ; 



352 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the kind that he most enjoyed,''and the kind of enjoyment he 
derived from it, furnished the cue for an interpretation of much 
of his poetry — a cue which is the clearer when compared with 
what music meant to Browning. 

The development of a Baltimore orchestra in 1873 was an 
expression of the reawakening of artistic life from Baltimore 
to the Gulf. By 1870 the call was repeatedly sounded for a 
new literature and a new criticism in the South. Short-lived 
magazines sprang up and were flooded with copy before their 
early deaths. Much was written that was ostentatiously sec- 
tional in tone, but much by men like Hayne and Cable and 
Page that approached the standard set by Joel Chandler Harris 
in his appeal for a literature which should be " intensely local 
in feeling, but utterly unprejudiced and unpartisan as to opin- 
ions, traditions, and sentiment. Whenever we have a genuine 
Southern literature, it will be American and cosmopolitan as 
well." Equally in the interest of the South was Hayne's 
demand for criticism which should put a quietus on the fatuous 
scribblers who had nothing to say and said it badly. '' No for- 
eign ridicule," he wrote in the Southern Magazine in 1874, 
" can stop this growing evil, until our own scholars and thinkers 
have the manliness and honesty to discourage instead of applaud- 
ing such manifestations of artistic weakness and artistic platitudes 
as have hitherto been foisted on us by persons uncalled and 
unchosen of any of the muses." 

At the same time a generously enterprising spirit led several 
of the leading Northern editors to accept and even solicit con- 
tributions from the South. In 1873 Scribners Monthly pro- 
jected and secured a widely advertised series of articles on "the 
great South." Harper s had a series of its own. The Atlantic, 
with Howells as editor, followed conservatively, and the Inde- 
pendent opened its columns to the poetry of the men whom 
it had condemned in most aggressive terms a dozen years 
earlier. More important to Lanier than any of these was 
Lippincott's, in which "Corn," "The Symphony," and "The 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 353 

Psalm of the West," with certain shorter poems, were pubHshed 
in 1875, 1876, and 1877 — poems by which his wide reputation 
was estabHshed. 

The encouragement given him by Hayne in the dark days 
of the law, when he had no time to write, was followed by a 
Northern friendship of even greater value to him when the 
Lippincott poems were brought to the kindly attention of 
Bayard Taylor. This busy and large-hearted man of letters 
seems to have been the literary friend of his whole generation. 
He was on terms of easy acquaintance with the most renowned 
of his day. He was a companion of publishers, editors, and 
journalists, and he showed a most generous interest in the 
fortunes of promising younger men. His literary status is sum- 
marized in his relation to the literary ceremonies of the Cen- 
tennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876. He wrote the Ode 
for the Fourth of July celebration after the honor had been 
declined by Bryant, Lowell, and Longfellow, and he had suffi- 
cient influence to gain for Lanier the distinction of writing 
the Cantata for the opening ceremonies. The exchange of let- 
ters between the two in connection with their efforts is unsur- 
passed as a record of detailed processes in poetic composition, 
criticism and rejoinder, and final revision. 

Lanier's conscious command of a poetic theory was a product 
of his habits of study and led to his appointment by President 
Daniel Coit Gilman as lecturer in English literature at Johns 
Hopkins University .^ From youth Lanier had been an exten- 
sive reader of the early English classics, and in Baltimore he 
eagerly used the resources of the Peabody Library, which was 
maintained especially for research students. He was keenly 
interested in stimulating general intelligence in literature 
among the adult public and also in promoting exact and 
technical study by qualified scholars. In 1878 he plunged once 

1 This was the second time that President Gilman had placed a poet in the 
position of teacher, for he had already done this with Edward Rowland Sill at 
the University of California (see p. 397). 



354 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

more into study, planned lecture courses, projected a research 
program for himself, and early in the next year received the 
Hopkins appointment. He approached his work with the 
utmost zest and, as long as his strength lasted, lectured effec- 
tively and 'worked on the critical texts and treatises which the 
scholarship of his time was just beginning to supply. Now, 
however, when he had established working relations with the 
orchestra and the university, he sank under the straih of all 
the preceding struggle, and in 1881 he died before reaching 
his fortieth year. 

Lanier's abiding conviction put the poet on the same plane 
with the prophet and the seer. He was far from according 
with Poe's total subordination of intellect and moral sense to 
the feeling for beauty. He seldom or never wrote a didactic 
poem, but he usually composed over a strong moralistic counter- 
point. In "Corn" the poet 

leads the vanward of his timid time 
And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme. 

In "The Bee" he will wage wars for the world. In "The 
Marshes of Glynn " he is 

the catholic man who hath mightily won 
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain. 

The poet's judgments are, therefore, certain to surpass those 
of his age, certain to reap a harvest of derision and abuse, and 
certain to approach the right because they are made in the 
light of eternity rather than in the ephemeral shadow of any 
passing day. 

The tolling of the bell of time which resounds throughout 
Lanier's poems does not deafen him to the harmonies or the 
discords of the moment. With all his consciousness of liter- 
ary tradition he was far more alive to the present than many 
of his Southern contemporaries, who were not so genuinely 
literary as imitatively bookish. "Corn" tells the tale of the 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 355 

improvident cotton-grower who becomes "A gamester's catspaw 
and a banker's slave." " The Symphony " is an arraignment 
of the industrial system. 

If business is battle, name it so : 
War-crimes less will shame it so, 
And widows less will blame it so. 

"Acknowledgment" (first sonnet) and "Remonstrance" were 
written of the troublous period which was wracked between 
doubts that merely disturbed and dogmas which were still 
advocated with all the subtleties of persecution that — in an 
enlightened age — will substitute ostracism for the stake and 
social boycott for excommunication. 

In the modest volume of his collected work — for his writing 
was mainly done in his last eight years, and he was not a 
garrulous poet — there is a marked variety. "The Revenge of 
Hamish " is a clear reflection of his zest for heroic story. It 
is one of the notably successful attempts of his day to emulate 
the old ballad, and it is the better for restoring the spirit of 
balladry without imitating the manner. " How Love Looked 
for Hell," without being imitative of anyone, is distinctly pre- 
Raphaelite in tone. Rossetti might have written it. In " The 
Stirrup-Cup " there is an Elizabethan note, and " Night and 
Day" and the "Marsh Song — at Sunset" are literary lyrics 
for the readers of " Othello " and " The Tempest." These 
and their like give token of Lanier's versatility, just as the 
" Song of the Chattahoochee" displays his command of certain 
obvious devices in diction and rhythm ; but the poems most 
distinctive of Lanier and most generally quoted are the longer 
meditations already mentioned, and, in particular, " The Sym- 
phony" and "The Marshes of Glynn." Of these the earlier 
is much quoted by social reformers for the vigor of its protests 
at the exploitation of labor ; by musicians, because of the sus- 
tained metaphor — though it might better have been named 
"The Orchestra"; and by those who love a certain fulsomeness 



356 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of sensuous appeal in verse. This last trait gains friends also 
for "The Marshes of Glynn," though its supreme passage, 
the last forty lines, is free from the decorative elaborations 
which in the earlier portion distract the reader from the 
content they adorn. 

In the development of artistic power the formative period is 
the most open to influence and the most likely to be formal 
and self-conscious. Early and full maturity bring the nicest 
balance between the thing said and the manner of saying it ; 
and a later period often is marked by overcompression or over- 
elaboration, a neglect of form in favor of content. Lanier, who 
died on the approach to middle life, had just published " The 
Science of English Verse " and was studiously aware of poetic 
processes, from the ingenious conceits of the " Paradise of Dainty 
Devices " to the metrical experiments of Swinburne and his 
contemporaries. In the compound of factors which were 
blending into the matured Lanier there was still a good 
measure of Elizabethan ingenuity. He felt a pleasant thrill 
in riding a metaphor down the page. He played repeatedly, 
for example, with the concept of the passage of time. In the 
second sonnet of " Acknowledgment " this age is a ccjmma, 
and all time a complex sentence (four lines) ; in " Clover " 
the course-of-things is a browsing ox (twenty-five lines) ; 
in "The Symphony" the leaves are dials on which time tells 
his hours (three lines) ; in the first of the " Sonnets on 
Columbus " prickly seconds and dull-blade minutes mark three 
hours of suspense (three lines) ; and in " The Stirrup-Cup " 
death is a cordial compounded by time from the reapings of 
poets long dead (twelve lines). These all are picturesquely 
suggestive, but they are rather imposed on the idea than 
derived from it. Other poets, to be sure, have erred in the 
same way and then perhaps redeemed themselves. Lanier, 
however, said nothing so fundamentally true and compact as 
Pope's "Years following years steal something every day," 
or Shakespeare's "And that old common arbitrator, Time," or 
his " whirligig of time." There is a similar reaching for effect 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 357 

in the rhythmical quality of many well-known passages. The 
twelve-line description of the velvet flute-note in " The Sym- 
phony " is more deft and intricate than convincing. The figures 
stumble on each other's heels, and the alliterations, assonances, 
and three- and five-fold rimes are intrusively gratuitous. In like 
manner the opening lines of " The Marshes of Glynn " illus- 
trate the over-luxuriance of Lanier. He delighted in tropical 
exuberance ; he rioted in his letters with less restraint than 
in his verse, and in one written to his wife in 1874 he con- 
fessed parenthetically : "In plain terms — sweet Heaven, how 
I do abhor these same plain terms — I have been playing 
' Stradella.' " When he wrote this Lanier was thirty-two. 
Before his death he had approached the point of liking the 
plain term better and employing it oftener. 

" The Marshes of Glynn " is a personal utterance of Lanier 
in its form, in its sensuous opulence, in its social sympathies, 
and in its religion ; but in these latter respects it is emphatically 
the utterance also of the period that produced Lanier. It was 
written in 1878, the year of Bryant's death ; it was written in 
the structural sequence of Bryant's " Thanatopsis " ; and in its 
applications it indicates the changes that had taken place in 
religious thought since Bryant's youth. In the earlier poem 
the various language that Nature speaks is expounded in 
general terms, before " Thoughts of the last bitter hour " lead 
to the monody on death and the" resolve so to live that death 
shall have no fears. The latter poem differentiates the tones of 
Nature, lingering first in the cloistral depths of the woods during 
the heat of a June day. In the cool and quiet the poet's 

. . . heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke 
Of the scythe of time and the tiowel of trade is low. 
And belief overmasters doubt. 

So, toward sunset, he leaves the protected green colonnades 
and goes out unafraid to face the expanse of "a world of 
marsh that borders a world of sea." Here Nature, who has 
consoled him in the forest, fills him with a great exhilaration. 



358 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea ? 

Somehow my soul seems suddenly free 

From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, 

By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. 

From the marshes he learns a lesson of life rather than of 
death — the spiritual value of aspiration and the emancipating 
gift of a broad faith. " Thanatopsis " ends with a nobly stated but 
restraining admonition; "The Marshes" with a song of liberty: 

I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 

In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies : 

By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 

I will heartily lay me a-hold of the greatness of God. 

This is written in the positive mood — and in the measure, 
too — of Browning's "Saul." Both poems record the throw- 
ing off of paralyzing restraint and the substitution of hope 
for dread that resulted from the religious struggles of the 
nineteenth century. 

Lanier went far toward representing the South by the best 
of all methods, which is to write as a citizen of the world and 
not as a sectionalist. He was not at the height of his maturity, 
and he wrote at times with the exuberance and at times with 
the self-consciousness that he would in all likelihood have out- 
grown in the fullness of years. He was an aggressive thinker. 
Only the indifference of his generation to poetry can account 
for the fact that he was not persecuted for the courage of 
many utterances. And he was essentially the poet in artistry 
as well as in vision. 

BOOK LIST 
General References 

Collections 

Clarke, Jennie T. Songs of the South (Introduction by J. C. 

Harris). 1913. 
Fulton, N. G. Southern Life in Southern Literature. 1917. 
Kent, C. W. (literary editor). Library of Southern Literature. 1907. 

15 vols. 
Manly, Louise. Southern Literature. 1895. 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 359 

Moore, Frank. Songs and Ballads of the Southern People. 1886. 
Trent, W. P. Southern Writers. Selections in Prose and Verse. 1905. 
Wauchope, G. a. Writers of South Carolina, 1910. 

History and Criticism 

Baskervill, W. M. Southern Writers: Biographical and Critical 

Studies. 1898-1903. 2 vols. 
Davidson, J. W. Living Writers of the South. 1869. 
De Menil, a. N. Literature of the Louisiana Territory. 1904. 
Holliday, Carl. History of Southern Literature. 1906. 
Link, S. A. Pioneers of Southern Literature. 1903. 2 vols. 
Orgain, Kate A. Southern Authors in Poetry and Prose. 1908. 
Painter, F. V. N. Poets of the South. 1903. 
Painter, F. V. N. Poets of Virginia. 1907. 

Among periodical articles some of the more important are as 
follows : 

Baskervill, W. M. Southern Literature. Ptib. Mod. Lang. Assoc, 

Vol. VII, p. 89. 
Coleman, C. W. Recent Movement in Southern Literature. 

Harper's, Vol. LXXIV, p. 837. 
Henneman, J. B. National Element in Southern Literature. 

Sewanee Review, Vol. XI, p. 345. 
Mabie, H. W. The Poetry of the South. International Monthly, 

Vol. V, p. 200. 
Smith, C. A. PossibiHties of Southern Literature. Sewanee Review, 

Vol. VI, p. 298. 
Snyder, H. N. The Matter of Southern Literature. Sewanee 

Review, Vol. XV, p. 218. 
Trent, W. P. Dominant Forces in Southern Life. Atlantic, Vol. 

LXXIX, p. 42. 
'WooDBERRY, G. E. The South in American Letters. Harper's, 

Vol. CVII, p. 735. 

Individual Authors 

Henry Timrod. Works. Memorial Edition. 1899, 1901. These ap- 
peared in book form originally as follovirs : Poems, 1 860. Complete 
edition (edited by Paul Hamilton Hayne), 1873, 1874; Katie, 1884. 

Biography and Criticism 

Memoir prefixed to editions of 1899 and 1901. Sketch with edition 

of 1872, by P. H. Hayne. 
Austin, H. Henry Timrod. Liteiitational Review, September, 1880. 
Hayne, P. H. Sketch with edition of 1872. 
Ross, C. H. The New Edition of Timrod. Sewanee Review, October, 

1899. - • 

•RoxJTK, J. E. Some Fugitive Poems of Timrod. South Atlantic 

Quarterly, January, 1903. ... . .....■...* 



36o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Wauchope, G. a. Henry Timrod, Laureate of the Confederacy. 

Notth Carolina Review., May 5, 191 2. 
Wauchope, G. A. Henry Timrod : Man and Poet, a Critical Study. 

1915- 
See also volumes of history and criticism under General References, 
above. 

Paul Hamilton Hayne. Works. Poems of. Complete edition (his 
own selection), with biographical introduction by Margaret Preston. 
1882. The work appeared in book form originally as follows 
Poems, 1855 ; Sonnets, and Other Poems, 1857, 1859 ; Avolio, i860 
Legends and Lyrics, 1872; The Mountain of the Lovers, 1875 
Life of Robert Y. Hayne, 1878; Life of Hugh S. Legare, 1878. 

Biography and Criticism 

There is no adequate biography of Hayne. 

Allan, Elizabeth Preston. The Life and Letters of Margaret 
Junkin Preston. 1903. 

Brown, J. T., Jr. Paul Hamilton Hale. Sewanee Review, April, 1906. 

Lanier, Sidney. Essays. 1899. 

MiMS, E. Sidney Lanier. 1905. 

Preston, Margaret Junkin. Introduction to edition of 1882 (see 
above). 

See also the Library of Southern Literature, in which the introduction 
to the selections from Hayne is well supplemented by his own 
reminiscences reprinted from the Southern Bivouac. See also 
Paul Hamilton Hayne (edited by S. A. Link) and the passages in 
the survey histories. 

Sidney Lanier. Works. Poems of Sidney Lanier, edited by his wife, 
with a memorial by William Hayes Ward. 1884. Select poems of 
Sidney Lanier, edited with an introduction, notes, and bibliography, 
by Morgan Callaway. 1895. (The critical edition.) Lanier's works 
appeared in book form originally as follows : Tiger Lilies, a Novel, 
1867; Florida, its Scenery, Climate, and History, 1876; Poems, 
1877; The Boy's Froissart, 1878; The Science of English Verse, 
1880 ; The Boy's King Arthur, 1880 ; The Boy's Mabinogion, 1881 ; 
The Boy's Percy, 1882; The English Novel, 1883; Music and 
Poetry : Essays, 1 898 ; Retrospects and Prospects, 1 899 ; Shake- 
speare and his Forerunners, 1902. 

Bibliographies 

A bibliography prepared for the Southern History Association by 

G. S. Wills, July, 1899. 
A bibliography appended to Select Poems of Lanier (edited by 

Morgan Callaway). 1895. Also Cambridge History of American 

Literature, Vol. II, pp. 600-603. 



THE POETRY OF THE SOUTH 361 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by Edwin Mims. 1905. (A.M.L. Ser.) 

See also Letters of Sidney Lanier. Selections from his Correspond- 
ence, 1866-1881. 1911. 

Carroll, C. C. Synthesis and Analysis of the Poetry of Sidney 
Lanier. 1910. 

Clarke, G. H. Some Reminiscences and Early Letters of Sidney 
Lanier. 1907. 

Oilman, D. C. Sidney Lanier, Reminiscences and Letters. South 
Atlantic Quarterly, April, 1905. 

GossE, Edmund. Questions at Issue. 1893. 

HiGGlNSON, T. W. Contemporaries. 1899. 

Kent, C. W. A Study of Lanier's Poems. Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc, 
Vol. VII, pp. 33-63. 

Moses, M. J. The Literature of the South. 1910. 

NoRTHRUP, M. H. Sidney Lanier, Recollections and Letters. Lip- 
pincotfs, March, 1905. 

Tolman, a. H. Views about Hamlet and Other Essays. 

Trent, W. P. Southern Writers. 1905. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Read the poems' or passages alluded to in the text on sentimental- 
ism by Irving (p. 126), Cooper (p. 148), Bryant (p. 163), Longfellow 
(p. 269), and compare with the statement on Timrod. 

Compare Timrod's " Cotton Boll " with Bryant's " The Sower " 
or Lanier's " Com " for the imaginative grasp of what had ordinarily 
been considered a prosaic subject. 

Read the war lyrics of Timrod or Hayne and compare in subject, 
treatment, and temper with the corresponding work of a Northern poet. 

Read several poems of Lanier taken at random for the allusions 
to music. 

Read Lanier for the evident influence of Shakespeare in supplying 
him with poetic material. Is there evidence that he was affected by 
Shakespeare's poetic form ? 

Read the Taylor-Lanier correspondence with reference to the 
Centennial Cantata. Does the poem fulfill Lanier's intentions ? 

Read Lanier's poems and passages on poetry and the poet and 
compare them with similar passages in the work of another poet. 

Read Lanier, Timrod, or Hayne for the presence of nature 
allusions which would be natural only for a poet of the South. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

WALT WHITMAN 

Walt Whitman (i 8 19-1892) and Mark Twain are the two 
authors whom the rest of the world have chosen to regard 
as distinctively American. They are in fact more strikingly 
different from European writers than any other two in their 
outer and inner^reaction against cultural tradition, though it 
is an error to regard Americanism as an utterly new thing 
instead of a compound of new and old elements. Whitman 
was born on Long Island in 18 19: 

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, 
Bom here of parents born here, from parents the same, and their 
parents the same. 

They were simple, natural, country people, — the mother, mild- 
mannered and competent, and the father, " strong, self-sufficient, 
manly, mean, anger 'd, unjust," — people with the kind of stal^ 
wart naivete who would christen three of their sons Andrew 
Jackson, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson. Walt 
was the second of nine children. From boyhood he was quite 
able to take care of himself — amiable, slow-going, fond of 
chatting with the common folk of his own kind, and happy 
out of doors, whether on the beach or among the Long Island 
hills. At twelve he began to work for his living — in a lawyer's 
office and a doctor's, in printing shops and small newspaper 
offices, a^d in more than one school. Newspaper work 
included writing as well as typesetting and everything between, 
and writing resulted in his sending accepted contributions to 
such respected publications as the Democratic Review and 
George P. Morris's popular J/z>n?r, 
362 



WALT WHITMAN 363 

From 1841 to 1850 he was more steadily using his pen. 
He wrote some eighteen stories for the periodicals and, 
though he worked in defiance of the usual schedule, made his 
way in journalism to the point of becoming editor of the 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle. In 1848 he moved in a wider orbit, 
going down to New Orleans through the Ohio valley to work 
on the new Crescent, and coming back by way of the Missis- 
sippi and the Great Lakes. In 1850 he was living with his 
family in Brooklyn. By this time he had done a great deal 
of reading, starting with "The Arabian Nights" and Scott, 
and moving on by his own choice through the classics. Always, 
when he could, he read alone and out of doors ; but seldom has 
man more completely fulfilled Emerson's behest to compensate 
for solitude with society, for he was one of the great comrades 
of history. He found his society in places of his own selection 
— on the Broadway stages, in the Brooklyn ferryboats, and 
in the gallery at the Italian opera. 

Here is his own testimony: " — the drivers — a strange, 
natural quick-eyed and wondrous race — (not only Rabelais and 
Cervantes would have gloated upon them, but Homer and 
Shakspere would) — how well I remember them, and must 
here give a word about them. . . . They had immense quali- 
ties, largely animal — eating, drinking, women — great personal 
pride, in their way — perhaps a few slouches here and there, 
but I should have trusted the general run of them, in their 
simple good-will and honor, under all circumstances." And of 
the harbor: "Almost daily, later ('50 to '60), I cross'd on the 
boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full 
sweep, absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings." There 
was a time when he affected fine clothes, but as he matured 
his dress and the dress of his ideas became strikingly informal, 
more like that of his comrades. 

Of the five years before the " Leaves of Grass " appeared 
too little is known. At thirty-one he was a natural Bohemian, 
independent enough not even to do the conventional Bohemian 



364 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

things like drinking and smoking, but he had shown no 
marked promise of achieving anything more than his own 
personal freedom. His writing and public speaking had been 
commonplace, and his journalistic work respectably successful. 
Then in 1855 came the evidence of an immensely expansive 
development, a development so great and so unusual that it 
met the fate of its kind, receiving from all but a very few 
neglect, derision, or contempt. John Burroughs tells of the 
staff of a leading daily paper in New York, assembled on 
Saturday afternoon to be paid off, greeting the passages that 
were read aloud to them with " peals upon peals of ironical 
laughter." Whitman's family were indifferent. His brother 
George said he "didn't read it at all — didn't think it worth 
reading — fingered it a little. Mother thought as I did . . . 
Mother said that if ' Hiawatha ' was poetry, perhaps Walt's 
was." Obscure young men like Thoreau and Burroughs were 
moved to early^dmiration, but their opinion counted for noth- 
ing with the multitude. Emerson was the single man of 
influence to " greet [Whitman] at the beginning of a great 
career." The larger public paid no attention to him ; the 
smaller, artistic public did what they always do to a defiantly 
independent artist. Whitman determined his own reception 
when he wrote, 

Bearded, sunburnt, gray-neck 'd, forbidding, I have arrived, 

To be wrestled with as I pass for the solid prizes of the universe, 

For such I afford whoever can persevere to win them. 

In 1856, in a new form and with added material but under 
the same title, there came a second edition that received more 
attention and correspondingly more abuse. His frank and 
often wanton treatment of sex gave pause to almost every 
reader, qualifying the approval of his strongest champions. 
Emerson wrote to Carlyle : " One book, last summer, came 
out in New York, a nondescript monster, which yet had ter- 
rible eyes and buffalo strength, and was indisputably American 



WALT WHITMAN 365 

— which I thought to send you ; but the book throve so badly 
with the few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals 
so much, that I never did. Yet I believe now again I shall." 
In the meanwhile the ultra-respectable — of the Jaffrey Pyncheon 
type — were eager to hound Whitman and his publishers out 
of society. Undoubtedly the advertising given by his enemies 
contributed no little to the circulation of the third and again 
enlarged edition of i860. Of this between four and five 
thousand copies were sold in due time. 

In 1862, when his brother George was seriously wounded 
at Fredericksburg, Whitman became a hospital nurse in 
Washington. With his peculiar gifts of comradeship and his 
life-long acquaintance with the common man, he was able to 
give thousands of sufferers the kind of personal, affectionate 
attention that helped all, who were not doomed, to fight their 
way to recovery. From every side has come the testimony as 
to his unique relationship with them. One must be quoted : 

Never shall I forget one night when I accompanied him on his 
rounds through a hospital, filled with those wounded young Americans 
whose heroism he has sung in deathless numbers. There were three 
rows of cots, and each cot bore its man. When he appeared, in 
passing along, there was a smile of affection and welcome on every 
face, however wan, and his presence seemed to light up the place as 
it might be lit by the presence of the Son of Love. From cot to cot 
they called him, often in tremulous tones or in whispers; they em- 
braced him, they touched his hand, they gazed at him. . . . He did the 
things for them which no nurse or doctor could do, and he seemed to 
leave a benediction at every cot as he passed along. The lights had 
gleamed for hours in the hospital that night before he left it, and as he 
took his way towards the door, you could hear the voice of many a 
stricken hero calling, " Walt, Walt, Walt, come again 1 come again ! " 

^ThQ fruits in poetry from these years of duress were in 
ome ways the richest of his lifetime. They were included 
in the edition of 1865 under the title "Drum-Taps." Here 
were new poems "of the body and of the soul," telHng of his 

/ 



'f 11 



366 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

vigils on the field and in the hospital, not shrinking from de- 
tails of horror and death ; and here also were poems that dealt 
with the implications of the war and of nationalism militant. 
" Drum-Taps " — the title poem — and " Beat ! Beat ! Drums ! " 
sound the call to arms. " The Song of the Banner at Daybreak " 
contrasts the patriotism of the philistine with the patriotism of 
the idealist. "Pioneers! O Pioneers!" sings of America for 
the world, with its thrillingly prophetic fourth stanza. 

Have the elder races halted .? . 

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there beyond 

the seas ? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson. 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

And " President Lincoln's Burial Hymn " (" When Lilacs last 
in the Door-yard Bloom 'd ") with " O Captain ! My Captain I " 
are preeminent among the multitude of songs in praise of 
Lincoln. Whitman wrote fairly in a letter : " The book is 
therefore unprecedently sad (as these days are, are they not ?), 
but it also has the blast of the trumpet and the drum pounds 
and whirrs in it, and then an undertone of sweetest comrade- 
ship and human love threads its steady thread inside the chaos 
and is heard at every lull and interstice thereof. Truly also, 
it has clear notes of faith and triumph." 

There were other fateful fruits of his hospital service. It is 
the salvation of the surgeon and the nurse that they adopt a 
professional attitude toward their tasks ; they save individual 
lives in their struggle to save human life. But it was the 
essence of Whitman's work among the soldiers that he should 
pour out his compassion without stint. The drain of energy 
forced him more than once to leave Washington for rest at 
home, and assisting at operations resulted in poisonous con- 
tagions. He seemed to recover from these, only to give way 
in 1873 to a consequent attack of paralysis, and, though he 
had nineteen years to live, he was never quite free from the 
shadow of this menace. 



WALT WHITMAN 367 

During the latter years, however, publi c respect in creased as 
his strength waned. Popularity this self-elected poet of the 
people never gained, but he became a poets' poet. A Whitman 
vogue developed among the consciously literary, just as a 
Browning vogue did in the same decades. It is rather a mis- 
fortune than otherwise for any art or artist to be made the 
subject of a fad, but the growth of Whitman's repute was slow 
and was rooted in the regard of other artists. In the years 
near 1870 essays and reviews in England and Germany showed 
how deeply " Leaves of Grass " impressed the small group of 
men who knew what the essentials of poetry were and were 
not afraid to acknowledge their great debt to this strange 
innovator. The timid culture of America at first shrank as 
usual from any native work which was un- European in aspect, 
and lagged behind foreign indorsement of something freshly 
American just as it did in the cases of Mark Twain and 
"Joaquin" Miller (see pp. 293 and 403). When it did begin 
to take Whitman seriously, the heartfelt admiration of Freil- 
igrath in Germany and of William Michael Rossetti and John 
Addington Symonds in England, the published charge that 
America was neglecting a great poet, and the public offer of 
assistance from English friends combined to build up for 
" the good gray poet " a body of support to which the 
belated interest of the would-be intellectuals was a negligible 
addition. From 1881 to his death eleven years later the 
income from his writings was sufficient to maintain him in 
" decent poverty." 

In "Myself and Mine" Whitman delivered an admonition 
in spite of which he has been discussed in a whole alcoveful 
of books and in innumerable lectures : 

I call to the world to distrust the accounts of my friends, but listen 

to my enemies — as I myself do ; 
I charge you, too, forever reject those who would expound me — 

for I cannot expound myself ; 
I charge that there be no theory nor school founded out of me ; 
I charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free. 



368 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The comment and the controversy which have accumulated 
around his poems and himself center about two nodal points : 
one is the relatively obvious consideration of the objections to 
his poetic form, his subject matter, and his conduct, and the 
other — far more complex and subtle — is the statement and 
appraisal of his philosophy of life. 

Prejudice and ignorance have had altoge ther too much to sa y 
about Whitman's versification, — as they still have in connection 
with the freer verse forms of the present day. Two or three 
simple facts should be stated at the outset, by way of clearing 
the ground. His earliest poetry was written in conventional form ; 
the form of "Leaves of Grass" was the result neither of laziness 
nor of inability to deal with the established measures. Through- 
out his work there are recurrent passages in regular rim,ed_meter. 
"O Captain! My Captain!" (1865), "Ethiopia Saluting the 
Colors " (1870), and the song of "The Singer in the Prison" 
(1870) are deliberate resorts to the old ways. More likely to 
escape the attention are unlabeled bits scattered through poems 
in Whitman's usual manner. The opening of the "Song of the 
Broad- Axe " is in eight measures of trochaic tetrameter with a 
single rime— it sounds like Emerson's ; and the first four lines 
of section 14 in "Walt Whitman," or the " Song of Myself," 
are iambic heptameters, a perfect stanza. Furthermore, he was 
not utterly alone in his generation. Similar experiments by some 
of his contemporaries are almost forgotten, because there was no 
vital relation between form and content ; because there was nothing 
vital in them ; but Whitman's rhythms sur vive because they are 
as gljyg as the wind in the tree tops. 

He.jtheorized out his._art in detail and referred to his lines 
as apparently "lawless at first perusal, although on closer 
examination a certain regularity appears, like the recurrence 
of lesser and larger waves on the sea-shore, rolling in without 
intermission, and fitfully rising and falling." His feeling, — 
and this is the right word for a question of artistic form, 
which should not be determined primarily by the intellect. 



WALT WHITMAN 369 

— his feeling was that the idea which is being expressed 
should govern from moment to moment the form into which 
it is cast, since any pattern imposed on a long poem must 
handicap freedom. In many a descriptive passage there is a 
succession of nice adjustments of word and rhythm to the 
thing being described. The flight of birds, the play of waves, 
the swaying of branches, the thousandfold variations of motion, 
are easy to reproduce and easy to perceive, but Whitman went 
far beyond these to the innate suggestions of things and of 
ideas. At the same time — not to be occupied in a search for 
variety which becomes merely chaos — he adopted a succession of 
pattern rhythms, taking a simple, free measure and modifying it 
in the reiterative form frequently used by Emerson and common 
to " Hiawatha." There was some acumen in Mrs. Whitman's 
comparison, for Longfellow's assumption of " frequent repeti- 
tions " was a reverting to the parallelism that prevails in most folk 
poetry, the same parallelism which is the warp of Whitman's 
patterns. Whitmjii_w as just as conscious in his choice of dic- 
tion as in his selection of measures. Poetry, he agreed with 
Wordsworth, was choked with outworn phrases ; the language 
of the people should be the source of a poetic tongue. From 
this he could evolve a " perfectly clear, plate-glassy style." 

In execudon he was, of course^^uney^n. He wrote scores 
upon scores of passages that were full of splendor, of majesty, 
of rugged strength, of tender loveliness. In general it is true 
that the lines which deal with definite aspects of natural and 
physical beauty are most effective — lines of which "Out of 
the Cradle Endlessly Rocking " are the purest type ; but many 
of the poems and sections in which concrete imagery is sum- 
moned to the explication of a general idea are often finely 
successful — as in his stanzas on the poet, or on himself, 
"the divine average," for example: 

My foothold is tenon 'd and mortis'd in granite ; 
I laugh at what you call dissolution ; 
And I know the amplitude of time. 



370 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

To the hostile critic he offered an abundance of lines for 
unfriendly quotation, as almost every prolific poet has done. 
Furthermore, he opened to attack all the series of " catalogue," 
or "" inventory," passages, in which he abandoned the artistic 
habit of selective suggestion and overwhelmed the reader with 
an avalanche of detail. It is not necessary to defend these 
vagaries or excesses ; they are^obvious eccentricities in. Whit- 
man's workmanship, as are also the wanton barbarisms of_ 
wording into which he occasionally lapsed. There are good 
English equivalents for omnes and allons and dolce and rdsum^, 
and better ones than promidge, philosoph, and imperturbe. 

The most violent objections launched at Whitman were 
based on his unprecedented frankness in matters of sex. It 
was the habit of the Victorian period, whether in England or 
in America, to shroud in an unwholesome silence the im- 
pulse to beget life and the facts surrounding it as if they 
were shameful matters. In consequence a central element in 
social and individual experience tended to become a subject 
of morbid curiosity to young people and one of furtive self- 
indulgence to adults. This bred vicious ignorance, distorted 
half-knowledge, and, among other things, hysterical protesta- 
tions at any open violation of the code in action or in speech. 
People seemed to feel that they were vindicating their own 
probity by the voluminousness of their invective. So Whitman 
was made a scapegoat, just as Byron was at an earlier date ; 
and the merits of the controversies are obscured by the fact 
that however much in error the poets may have been, their 
accusers were hardly less in the wrong. Out of the babel of 
discussion one clearest note emerged in the form of a letter 
from an Englishwoman to W. M. Rossetti, who had lent 
her " Leaves of Grass " : 

I rejoice to have read these poems ; and if I or any true woman 
feel that, certainly men may hold their peace about them. You will 
understand that I still think that instinct of silence I spoke of a right 
and beautiful thing ; and that it is only lovers and poets (perhaps 



WALT WHITMAN 371 

only lovers and this poet) who may say what they will — the lover to 
his own, the poet to all because all are in a sense his own. Shame is 
like a very flexible veil that takes faithfully the shape of what it 
covers — lovely when it hides a lovely thing, ugly when it hides an 
ugly one. There is not any fear that the freedom of such impassioned 
words will destroy the sweet shame, the happy silence, that enfold 
and brood over the secrets of love in a woman's heart. 

This single judgment naturally cannot serve as a universal 
ultimatum, but it should serve as a warning for those who 
jump to the conclusion that only one mood is possible for the 
writer or reader of such passages. Those who are disturbed 
by them should be willing not to read the few score lines that 
are responsible for all the turmoil. " 

The only other charge against Whitman worth mentioning 
— the complaint at his '' colossal egotism " — is a subject more 
for interpretation than for defense. Properly understood, it 
leads far toward an understanding of the whole man. In the 
first place, if all his 'Ts" should be taken literally they would 
amount to no more than an unusual frankness of artistic 
expression. Every creative artist is of necessity an egotist. 
He is bound to believe in the special significance of what he 
is privileged to utter in words or tones or lines and colors. 
The whole anthology of poems on the poet and his work is a 
catalogue of supreme egotisms, even though most of them are 
written in the third person rather than the first. Whitman cast 
aside the regular locution without apology. But, as a further 
caution to the supersensitive, his "I's" do not always mean 
the same thing. Sometimes they are explicitly personal, as in, 

I, now, thirty-six years old, in perfect health, begin. 
Hoping to cease not till death. 

Sometimes they stand just as explicitly for " the average man." 
This he explained in the preface to the 1876 edition: ''I 
meant ' Leaves of Grass,' as published, to be the poem of 
average Identity (of yours, whoever you are, now reading these 



372 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

lines). ... To sing the Song of that law of average Identity, 
and of Yourself, consistently with the divine law of the uni- 
versal, is a main purpose of these ' Leaves.' " 

Finally, the egotistic " I " is often a token of the religious 
mysticism at the back of his faith. Without an understanding 
of this factor in Whitman he cannot be known. " Place your- 
self," said William James in his lecture on Bergson, "at the 
center of a man's philosophic vision and you understand at 
once all the different things it makes him write or say. But 
keep outside, use your post-mortem method, try to build the 
philosophy up out of the single phrases, taking first one and 
then another, and seeking to make them fit, and of course 
you fail. You crawl over the thing like a myopic ant over a 
building, tumbling into every microscopic crack or fissure, 
finding nothing but inconsistencies, and never suspecting that 
a centre exists." It is James again who gives the exact cue 
to Whitman's mysticism, this time in a chapter of "Varieties 
of Religious Experience." It is the experience of the mystic, 
he explains, to arrive in inspired moments at a height from 
which all truth seems to be divinely revealed. This revelation 
is not a flashlight perception of some single aspect of life, 
but a sense of the entire scheme of creation and a conviction 
that the truth has been imparted direct from God. It is clear, 
like the view from a mountain top, but, like such a view, it is 
incapable of adequate expression in words, — "an intuition," 
and now the words are Whitman's, " of the absolute balance, 
in time and space, of the whole of this multifarious, mad chaos 
of fraud, frivolity, hoggishness — this revel of fools, and in- 
credible make-believe and general unsettledness, we call the 
world \ a soul-sight of that divine clue and unseen thread 
which holds the whole congeries of things, all history and time, 
and all events, however trivial, however momentous, like a 
leashed dog in the hand of the hunter." It was the fashion 
of speech of the Hebrew prophets, when thus inspired, to 
preface their declarations with " Thus saith the Lord " ; 



WALT WHITMAN 373 

Whitman, with his simpler, "' I say" or '" I tell you," regarded 
himself no less as mouthpiece of the Most High. The vision 
made hi m ce rtain of an underlying unity in all life and of 
the_cqming supremacy of a law of love ; it made him equally 
certain of the mistakenness of human conditions and unquali- 
fiedly direct in his uttered verdicts. 

This sense of the whol eness of life — a transcendental doc- 
trin'e' — made all the parts deeply significant to him who could 
perceive their meaning. The same mystic consciousness is 
beneath all these passages, and all the others like them : 

I celebrate myself, 

And what I assume you shall assume, 

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. 

The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night ; 
Ya-honk ! he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation ; 
(The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen close ; 
I find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.) 

I believe a leaf of grass no less than the journey-work of the stars. 
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg 

of the wren, 
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, 
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, 
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, 
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue. 
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels, 
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's 
girl boiling her iron tea-kettle and baking short-cake. 

It explains, too, the otherwise bewildering excesses of the 
" inventory " passages, which, for all their apparent unrelated- 
ness, are always brought up with a unifying, inclusive turn. 
In the universe, then, — and Whitman thought of the word 
in its literal sense of a great and single design, — man was 
the supreme fact to whom all its objects " continually con- 
verge " ; as man was God-created, Whitman was no respecter 



374 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of persons, but a lover of the common folk, in whom the 
destiny of human-kind resided more than in presidents or 
kings. And since he considered the race in the light of ages 
upon ages, the generating of life seemed to him a matter of 
holiest import. 

For the carrying out of such a design the only fit vehicle 
is the purest sort of democracy ; all other working bases of 
human association are only temporary obstacles to the course 
of things ; and as Whitman saw the nearest approach to the 
right social order in his own country, he was an American by 
conviction as well as by the accident of placd. Governments,' 
he felt, were necessary conveniences, and so-called rulers were 
servants of the public from whom their powers were derived. 
The greatest driving power in life was public opinion, and 
the greatest potential molder of public opinion was the bard, 
seer, or poet. This poet was to be not a reformer but a 
preacher of a new gospel ; he was, in fact, to be infinitely 
patient in face of " meanness and agony without end " while he 
invoked the principles which would one day put them to rout. 

I hear it was charged" against me that I sought to destroy institutions; 

But really I am neither for nor against institutions ; 

(What indeed have I in common with them ? — Or what with the 

destruction of them ? ) 
Only I will establish in the Mannahatta, and in every city of These 

States, inland and seaboard, 
And in the fields and woods, and above every keel, little or large, 

that dents the water, 
Without edifices, or rules, or trustees, or any argument. 
The institution of the dear love of comrades. 

To the bard he attributed knowledge of science and history, 
— the learning of the broadly educated man, — but, beyond 
that, wisdom : 

He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportion, neither more 

nor less. . . . 
He is no arguer, he is judgment — (Nature accepts him absolutely ; ) 



WALT WHITMAN 375 

He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling round a 

helpless thing ; 
As he sees farthest, he has the most faith. 

He is no writer of " poems distilled from foreign poems " ; 
he is the propounder of 

the idea of free and perfect individuals, 
For that idea the bard walks in advance, leader of leaders. 
The attitude of him cheers up slaves and horrifies foreign despots. 

In America, whose "veins are filled with poetical stuff," 
Whitman was certain not only of the need for poets but of 
their ultimate power ; for in America, the cradle of the race, 
and through the bards God's will was to be done. 

Whitman arrived at the acme of self-reliance. With the 
mystic's sense of revealed truth at hand, and a devout con- 
viction that it was the poet's duty — his duty — to show men 
a new heaven and a new earth, he went on his way with per- 
fect faith. Emerson wrote of self-reliance in general, " Adhere 
to your act, and congratulate yourself if you have done some- 
thing strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a 
decorous age," Yet he remonstrated with Whitman, and in 
the attempt to modify his extravagance used arguments which 
were unanswerable. Nevertheless, said the younger poet, " I 
felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to 
disobey all, and pursue my own way " ; in doing which he 
bettered Emerson's instructions by disregarding his advice. 
Hostile or brutal criticism left him quite unruffled'. It reen- 
forced him in his conclusions and cheered him with the 
thought that they were receiving serious attention. After 
Swinburne's fiercest attack says Burroughs : "I could not 
discover either in word or look that he was disturbed a par- 
ticle by it. He spoke as kindly of Swinburne as ever. If he 
was pained at all, it was on Swinburne's account and not on 
his own. It was a sad spectacle to see a man retreat upon 
himself as Swinburne had done." 



3/6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

His daily preoccupation with " superior beings and eternal 
interests" gave him some of the elevations and some of the con- 
tempts of the Puritan fathers. It leads far to think of Whitman 
as a Puritan stripped of his dogma. It accounts for his daily 
absorption in things of religion, for hi s dem ocratic zeal, his dis- 
regard for the adornments of life, even for his subordination of^ 
the sentiment of love to the perpetuation of the race. In these 
respects he dwelt on the broad and permanent factors in human 
life, regarding the finite and personal only as he saw them in 
the midst of all time and space. And this leads to the man in 
his relation to science, with which Puritan dogma was at odds. 
Whitman was not in the usual sense a " nature poet." The 
beauties of nature exerted little appeal on him. He had nothing 
to say in detached observations on the primrose, or the moun- 
tain tops, or the sunset. But nature was, next to his own soul, 
the_source_of_jdeepest truth to him, a truth which science in 
his own day was making splendidly clear. The dependence of 
biological science on the material universe did not shake his 
faith in immortality. He simply took what knowledge science 
could contribute and understood it in the light of his faith, 
which transcended any science. Among modern poets he was 
one of the earliest to chant the pasan of creative evolution. 

Rise after rise boyv the phantoms behind me, 

Afar down I see the huge first Nothing — I know I was even there, 
I waited unseen and always, and slept through the lethargic mist, 
And took my time, and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. 

Before I was born out of my mother, generations guided me, 

My embryo has never been torpid — nothing could overlay it. 

For it the nebula cohered to an orb. 

The long, slow strata piled to rest it in, 

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 

Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths, and deposited it 

with care. 
All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me. 
Now I stand on this spot with my Soul. 



WALT WHITMAN 377 

It is impossible, as all critics agree, to_ compass Whitman 
in a book or essay or compress him into a summary. He was 
an immensely expansive personality whose writings are as 
broad as life itself. It is almost equally impossible for one 
who has really read over and through and under his poems 
to speak of him in measured terms. The world is coming 
round to Whitman much faster than he expected. Every 
great step in human progress is a step in the direction he 
was pointing. His larger faith, whether so recognized or not, 
is yearly the faith of more and more thinking people. And 
in an immediate way his influence on the generation of living 
poets is incomparably great. 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Author 

Walt Whitman. Works. Selections from the prose and poetry of 
Whitman. O. L. Triggs, editor. 1902. 10 vols. The best single 
volumes are Leaves of Grass, Complete Poetical Works, and Com- 
plete Prose Works. (Small, Maynard.) 1897 and 1898. During 
Whitman's lifetime ten successive enlarged editions of Leaves of 
Grass were published : in 1855, 1856, i860, 1867, 1871, 1876, 1881 
(Boston), 1 88 1 (Philadelphia), 1888, 1889, 1891. Other titles are as 
follows: *Drum-Taps, 1865; *Passage to India, 1871; *Demo- 
cratic Vistas, 1871; Memoranda during the War, 1875; Specimen 
Days and Collect, 1882, 1883; Two Rivulets, 1876; *Npvember 
Boughs, 1888 ; *Good-bye, My Fancy, 1891. (Titles with the mark * 
were included as new sections in the next forthcoming edition of 
Leaves of Grass.) 

Bibliographies 

Selections from Whitman. O. L. Triggs, editor. 1898. 

Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, 
Vol. VIII, pp. 129-153. C. W. Moulton, editor. 1905. Cambridge 
History of American Literature, Vol. II, pp. 551-581. 

Biography and Criticism 

There is no complete standard biography. The best single volume 

surveys are Walt Whitman, by G. R. Carpenter, 1909 {E.M.L. 

Ser.)\ and Walt Whitman: his Life and Works, by Bliss Perry, 

1906 (A.M.L. Ser.). 
BiNNS, H. B. A Life of Walt Whitman. 1905. 



378 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

BoYNTON, P. H. Whitman's Idea of the State. New Republic, Vol. 

VII, p. 139- 
Brooks, Van Wyck. America's Coming of Age. 191 5. 
Burroughs, John. Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person. 1867. 
Burroughs, John. Whitman : a Study. 1896. 
Carpenter, Edward. Days with Walt Whitman. 1906. 
Chapman, J. J. Emerson and Other Essays. 1892. 
Dart, W. K. Walt Whitman in New Orleans. Pub. Louisiana Hist. 

Soc, Vol. VII, pp. 97-112. 
Elliot, C. N. Walt Whitman as Man, Poet, and Friend. 191 5. 
Ferguson, J. D. American Literature in Spain. 1916. 
FoERSTER, Norman. Whitman as Poet of Nature. Pub. Mod. Lang. 

Assoc. ofAmer., Vol. XXI (N. S.), pp. 736-758. 
Gould, E. P. Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whitman.* 1900. 
GuMMERE, F. B. Democracy and Poetry. 191 1. 
HoLLOWAY, Emory. Cambridge History of American Literature. 

Vol. II, Bk. II, chap. i. 
Jones, P. M. Influence of Whitman on the Origin of " Vers Libre.'' 

Modem Language Review, Vol. XI, p. 186. 
Jones, P.M. Whitman in France. Modern Language Review,Yo\.^,-p.\. 
Lanier, Sidney. The English Novel. 1883. 
Lee, G. S. Order for the Next Poet. Putnain's Magazine, Vol. I 

p. 697 ; Vol. II, p. 99. 
Macphail, Andrew. Walt Whitman, in Essays in Puritanism. 1905 
More, P. E. 'W2\\.'^\{\'ix^z.i\,\Vi. Shelbume Essays. Fourth Series. 1906 
Pattee, F. L. American Literature since 1870, chap. ix. 191 5. 
Perry, Bliss. Walt Whitman : his Life and Work. 1906 and 1908. 
Santayana, George. Walt Whitman, in Lnterpretations of Poetry 

and Religion. 1900. 
Stedman, E. C. Poets of America. 1885. 
Stevenson, R. L. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 1882. 
Swinburne, A. C. Studies in Prose and Poetry. 1894. 
Traubel, H. L. In re Walt Whitman. 1893. 
Traubel, H. L. With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 473. 1906. (This 

is Vol. I of Traubel's diary notes made during Whitman's life. 

Vol. II, 1908; Vol. Ill, 1914. Vol. IV is announced for early 

publication, and the whole work, when completed, will fill eight 

or ten volumes.) 
Walling, W. E. Whitman and Traubel. 1916. 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Select and discuss poems and stanzas in Whitman which are 
written in conventional rhythms. 

Select and discuss passages in which he employs changing rh)rthms 
adjusted to the persons or objects in hand. 



WALT WHITMAN 379 

Study Whitman's diction with reference to his use of the average 
man's speech and to his occasional use of foreign words, corrupted 
words (whether foreign or English), and coined words. 

List and discuss poems which are clearly autobiographical. Does 
this list include any personal lyrics ? 

List and discuss poems written in the first person but intended 
as poems of " the divine average." 

Select and discuss poems and passages on the theme of com- 
panionship. 

Select and discuss poems and passages which express his sense of 
universal law. 

Read his longer poems for passages on the subject of the state, 
the rulers, and public opinion. 

Read and discuss his utterances on poetry and the poet, noting 
especially "The Song of the Banner at Daybreak" and "As I sat 
by Bliie Ontario's Shore." 

Read and discuss Whitman's utterances on war and nationalism. 

Read for an estimate of his feeling for the beauties of nature. 



CHAPTER XXV 
THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 

There is a valid parallel between the beginnings of American 
literature and the early stages of its development in the West, 
for in both instances it followed on the wave of pioneer settle- 
ment. The earliest writers came from the East and were only 
temporary sojourners in the new country, Bret Harte and Mark 
Twain corresponding in different degrees to colonists like John 
Smith and Nathaniel Ward. A more permanent allegiance 
developed in a second group who lived out their lives in the 
land of their adoption, such, for example, as Joaquin Miller 
and Increase Mather. And the final stage is fulfilled by those 
whose whole lives belonged to the maturing frontier, like most 
of the second generation. The parallel exists too in the fact 
that the early authors wrote usually with one eye on the older 
community, eager for approval and half resentful of criticism 
— an attitude of West toward East which still survives in the 
timider element along the chain from London to New York 
to Chicago to San Francisco to Honolulu. The obvious con- 
trasts between the motives for settlement, the character of the 
settlers, and the nature of their writings only serve to emphasize 
the underlying similarities. Manners change, but human nature 
changes so much more slowly that it seems almost a constant. 

Bret Harte (i 839-1902) is the outstanding writer who lived 
for a while in the far West, turned it to literary account, failed 
in any deep sense either to sympathize with its spirit or to 
represent it, and left it permanently and with apparent relief. 
He was an Eastern town-bred boy of cultured parentage who 
aspired to become a poet. At eighteen he went to California 
where, before he was twenty-one, he saw life as tutor, express 
380 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 381 

messenger, typesetter, teacher, and drug clerk. During half 
of the next fourteen years in San Francisco he was secretary 
of the California mint, and during all of them he was primarily 
interested in authorship. He wrote for periodicals East and 
West and had a manuscript accepted by the Atlantic as early 
as 1863. With the founding of the Overland Monthly in 1868 
he became editor, and with the publication of " The Luck of 
Roaring Camp " in the second number he jumped into fabu- 
lous popularity. In 1871 he went to New York, and in 1878 
he went abroad, where he lived till his death in complete 
estrangement from all his old associates. These latter facts 
deserve mention only as they stress the lightness of his con- 
tact with the West. He found fresh material there which he 
used with great narrative adroitness, contributing definitely to 
the progress of short-story technique. But his tales are deftly 
melodramatic, built on a sort of paradox formula, and greatly 
indebted in detail and mannerisms to the example of Charles 
Dickens. Harte was beyond any question a good craftsman ; 
his wares would still find a ready magazine market, for they 
would be modern in execution, but there is no soul in what 
he wrote. He was a reporter with a gift for rapid-moving, 
close-knit narrative. He was greatly interested in facts, but 
very little concerned with the truth. He wrote some clever 
stories, but he seems like a trinket shop at the foot of Pike's 
Peak as Mark Twain looms above him. 

The life of Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 
1835-1910) probably touches American life at more points 
than that of any other author. The first half has been very 
definitely written into his books, and the whole has been told 
with his help in one of the best of American biographies. ^ 
It involves indirectly his Virginia parentage and the pioneer 
experiences of his father and mother in the Tennessee moun- 
tains ; his own residence in the Mississippi valley and on both 
seacoasts ; his activities as printer, river-pilot, journalist, lecturer, 

1 " Mark Twain, a Biography," by Albert Bigelow Paine. 3 vols. 1912. 



382 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and publisher ; his friendships with all sorts and conditions of men 
from California miners to the crowned heads of Europe; the joys 
and sorrows of a beautiful family life ; the making and losing of 
several fortunes ; and an old age crowded with honors and popu- 
larity, yet overshadowed by a tragic cloud of doubts and griefs. 

His parents, who had been dissatisfied with their attempted 
settlement in a Tennessee mountain town, left it in 1835 with 
four children for Florida, Missouri, allured to the move by the 
optimism of a relative, as it worked on their own pioneer rest- 
lessness. The conditions they left are vividly described in the 
first eleven chapters of '" The Gilded Age." In a little town of 
twenty-one dwellings the boy was born in the autumn of 1835. 
When he was four years old the family moved to Hannibal, 
a river town. Sam Clemens was an irresponsible, dreamy, 
rather fragile child, a problem to parents and teachers and 
given to associating with the boys presented in "Tom Sawyer," 
the most notable of whom was Tom Blankenship, the original 
of " Huckleberry Finn." His father, consistently unsuccessful, 
was made justice of the peace and finally was elected clerk of 
the circuit court, only to die in 1847 from exposure in the 
campaign. For the next ten years young Clemens was engaged 
in the printing business, first under his brother Orion on a Han- 
nibal journal (see " My First Literary Venture," in " Sketches, 
New and Old," pp. 110-114) ; then during fifteen months in 
New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, and next in Keokuk, 
Illinois, and Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Finally, in April, 1857, he began to "learn the river" from 
Horace Bixby, pilot of the Paul Jones. His experience on 
the river, the basis for " Life on the Mississippi," was early 
marked by the tragic destruction of the Pennsylvania, on 
which his younger brother, Henry, suffered a fearful death, 
the first of the personal sorrows which were deeply scored 
into his life. His career as pilot was ended by the closing of 
river traffic in the spring of 1861, but it gave him, with many 
other bequests, his pen name, derived from one of the calls 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 383 

used in sounding the depth of the ever-shifting channel. 
Piloting during war times did not appeal to him. " I am not 
very anxious to get up into a glass perch and be shot at by 
either side. I '11 go home and reflect on the matter," And 
after reflection he chose the better part of valor and stayed on 
land. In the next three months there followed his amusing 
adventures recorded in " The Private History of a Campaign 
that Failed" (see "The American Claimant," pp. 243-265); 
and in July, 1861, he went with his brother Orion to serve 
with J. W. Nye, territorial governor of Nevada. The life of 
the next months went into ''Roughing It," first at Carson City, 
then at Humboldt, until, in August, 1862, he began his journal- 
istic work in California on The Virginia City Enterprise. At 
twenty-five he had secured his first view of the country from 
coast to coast and all down the central artery, he had been 
schooled in the exacting discipline of the printer's trade (see 
pp. 47, 48) and in the still more rigorous responsibilities of 
river piloting, and he had begun to write for a living. Two 
more steps remained in the growth of his acquaintance with 
the external world, and these followed after five years of shift- 
ing fortunes on California newspapers. The first was his trip to 
Honolulu as correspondent for the Sacramento Union, on the 
new steamer Ajax, and the second, in 1867, was his trip 
to the Holy Land on the steamship Quaker City for the 
tour which was to be immortalized in "Innocents Abroad," first 
as a series of newspaper letters and then in book form. 

With the publication of " The Innocents " in the summer 
of 1869 Mark Twain came to the halfway point. Out of his 
wide experience he had developed the habits of an observer 
and he had learned how to write. He had earned a reputation 
as a newspaper man, and he had published his most famous 
short story, "The Jumping Frog," using his talent in spin- 
ning a yarn ^ after his own fashion. His lecturing had met 

1 See his essay "How to Tell a Story" in "The Man that Corrupted 
Hadleyburg," pp. 225-230. 



384 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

with unqualified success ; the new book was selHng beyond all 
expectation — 67,000 copies in the first year; and he was 
happily married to Olivia Langdon, his balance wheel, his 
severest critic, and the friend of all his closest friends. 

The story of the rest of his life is a record of varied and 
spectacular fortunes. His home from 1871 to 1891 was in 
Hartford, Connecticut, where he was a neighbor of Charles 
Dudley Warner and an intimate of the Reverend Joseph 
Twitchell (the original of Harris in " A Tramp Abroad "), and 
where William Dean Howells, his friend of over forty years, 
often visited him. There was a kind of lavishness in everything 
he did. He built a mansion, made money with ease, spent it 
profusely, and invested it with the care-free optimism of Colonel 
Sellers himself. New inventions fascinated him and made him 
an easy victim for the fluent promoter, so that what was left 
from his ventures with the Buffalo Express and the Webster 
Publishing. Company went into other enterprises, of which 
the Paige typesetting machine was the most disastrous for this 
ex-printer. After his failure for a large amount, a later friend, 
Henry H, Rogers, took his affairs in hand and by good 
management enabled Mark Twain to meet all debts and 
enjoy a very handsome income during his later years. 

The ups and downs of business distracted him but did not 
baffle him. He traveled extensively, living abroad during most 
of the decade between 1891 and 1901. He made cordial friends 
wherever he went, but he was not weaned by them away from 
the old cronies of the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific coast. 
He accepted honors from Yale twice and from the University 
of Missouri, and in 1907 was the subject of a four- weeks' ova- 
tion from all England when he went over to receive the degree 
of Doctor of Letters from Oxford. His opinion was sought 
on public questions and he was importuned for speeches on 
every sort of occasion ; but his last years were shadowed by a 
succession of bereavements. In 1903 Mrs. Clemens died. Two 
children died in childhood, a third under tragic circumstances 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 385 

in 1909, and the surviving daughter was married and far away 
most of the time. His chief personal solace was found in 
his friendships with several schoolgirls. 

During those years after my wife's death I was washing about on 
a forlorn sea of banquets and speech-making in high and holy causes, 
and these things furnished me intellectual cheer and entertainment; 
but they got at my heart for an evening only, then left it dry and 
dusty. I had reached the grandfather stage of life without grand- 
children, so I began to adopt some. 

He died of angina pectoris in 19 10. 

Mark Twain's reputation was built on his humor. He came 
to his maturity in a fruitful decade just after the Civil War, 
when a crop of newspaper men were coming out with a reck- 
lessly fresh, informal jocularity which was related to the old 
American humor, but a great departure from it. They were 
all unconscious of making any contribution to American litera- 
ture. They never could have written books which would 
have won the attention of Irving's readers and the perusers 
of the old Annuals and the admirers of the Knickerbocker 
courtliness. They wrote for the world of Horace Greeley and 
the elder James Gordon Bennett, caring nothing for beauty of 
style or for any kind of literary tradition. They wrote under odd 
pen names like "John Phoenix," who preceded them by ten 
years — " Petroleum V. Nasby," " Artemus Ward," " Orpheus C. 
Kerr," " Max Adler," and " M. Quad " serving as fancy dress 
for Locke, Browne, Newell, Clark, and Lewis. They drew their 
material from the common people, as Lincoln had done with 
all his anecdotes, putting it in the idiom of the common people 
and frequently distorting it into illiterate spelling, as Lowell had 
done in "The Biglow Papers." This disturbed and shocked the 
lovers of a refined literature — men like Stedman, for example, 
who wrote to Bayard Taylor, " The whole country, owing to 
contagion of our American newspaper ' exchange ' system, is 
flooded, deluged, swamped, beneath a muddy tide of slang, 



386 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

vulgarity, inartistic [bathos], impertinence, and buffoonery that 
is not wit." But it was an irresistible tide that threw up on 
its waves something more than froth or flotsam, in the shape 
of a few real treasures from the deep — and the rarest was 
Mark Twain. 

Had there been no such journalistic tide this original genius 
would still have gone on his original way. What these other 
men did was much more to put the public into a humor for 
Mark Twain than to lead Mark Twain in his approach to the 
public. He started as the others did, allowing an undercurrent 
of seriousness to appear now and then in the flow of his 
extravagance. His platform experience taught him by the 
immediate response of the audience what were the most 
effective methods. 

All TuUy's rules and all Quintilian's too, 
He by the light of listening faces knew. 
And his rapt audience, all unconscious, lent 
Their own roused force to make him eloquent.^ 

He was quite deliberate in the employment of them. His 
essay on " How to Tell a Story " is an evidence of what he 
knew about structure, and his letter to the young London 
editorial assistant (see Paine's '" Mark Twain " pp. 1091-1093) 
is only the best of many passages which show his scrupulous 
regard for diction. He did not indulge in the usual vagaries 
of spelling ; he had, to paraphrase his own words, " a singu- 
larly fine and aristocratic respect for homely and unpretending 
English " ; and he treated punctuation as a " delicate art" for 
which he had the highest respect. People who carelessly think 
of Mark Twain as a kind of literary swashbuckler can disabuse 
themselves by an attentive reading of any few pages. 

While they are doing it, they can discover in addition to the 
points just mentioned that he was essentially clean-minded. 
Vulgar he was, to be sure, at times, in the sense of not 

1 James Russell Lowell, " Ode on Agassiz." 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 387 

indulging always in drawing-room talk or displaying drawing- 
room manners, as, for instance, in his repeated references to 
spitting, — to use the homely and unpretending word, — but he 
never partook of the nature of his rough and ready human 
subjects to quite the extent that Franklin or Lincoln did. 
His pages are utterly free from filth. He drew a line, no 
doubt assisted by Mrs. Clemens, between what he wrote for 
the public and his private speech and correspondence. " He 
had," Mr. Howells wrote, " the Southwestern, the Lincolnian, 
the Elizabethan breadth of parlance, which I suppose one 
ought not to call coarse, without calling one's self prudish ; 
and I was always hiding away in discreet holes and corners 
the letters in which he had loosed his bold fancy to stoop on 
rank suggestion ; I could not quite bear to burn them, and I 
could not, after the first reading, quite bear to look at them. 
I shall best give my feeling on this point by saying that in it 
he was Shakespearian, or if his ghost will not suffer me the 
word, then he was Baconian." 

His humor relied on his never-failing and often extravagant 
use of the incongruous and the irrelevant. Often this came 
out in his similes and metaphors. "A jay hasn't got any 
more principles than a Congressman." " His lectures on 
Mont Blanc . . . made people as anxious to see it as if it 
owed them money." It emerged in his impertinent person- 
alities, as in the instance of his first meeting with Grant, 
when he said after a moment of awkwardness : " General, I 
seem to be a little embarrassed. Are you ? " or as in the 
case of his reply to a query as to why he always carried a 
cotton umbrella in London, that it was the only kind he could 
be sure would not be stolen there. It appeared too in his 
sober misuse of historical facts with which he and his readers 
or auditors were well acquainted. And it was developed most 
elaborately in " hoax " passages where, in his violation of both 
fact and reason, the canny author looked like the innocent 
flower but was the serpent under it. 



388 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

A particular charm attached to his work because it was so 
apparently uncalculated and spontaneous. What he wrote seemed 
to be for his own delectation, and what he spoke to be the 
casual improvisation of the moment. At times, of course, he 
did improvise — with all the art of a musician whose mastery 
of technique is no less the result of great labor because he has 
it completely in hand ; but often the utterance which his hearers 
took for an extempore speech had been composed to the last 
syllable and then delivered with an art that concealed its own 
artistry. No doubt for the multitudes who bought up the edi- 
tions of " Innocents Abroad" the salient feature of Mark Twain's 
writing was its jovial extravagance. The first feeling of the 
public was that he had out-Phoenixed " Phoenix " and beaten 
"Petroleum Nasby" at his own game. Beyond question he liter- 
ally " enjoyed himself " when he was giving hilarious enjoyment 
to others ; the free play of his antic fancy was a kind of self- 
indulgence. The best evidence is offered in "Joan of Arc." 
The story is approached, pursued, and concluded in a spirit of 
admiration often amounting to reverence. Yet in the character 
of "The Paladin," Edmond Aubrey, the old miles gloriosus of 
Roman comedy, and in Joan's uncle, the historian reverted to 
his broadest jocosities. There are interpolated pages of pure 
farce. There are scenes in "Joan " that are companion pieces 
with portions of the sardonic " Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg." 
On his seventy-third birthday he wrote, " I like the ' Joan of 
Arc ' best of all my books ; and it is the best ; I know it per- 
fectly well." Yet this serious chronicle, with its occasional 
outbursts of fun, was of a piece with his best-known book of 
nearly thirty years earlier, the laugh-invoking " Innocents 
Abroad." The books are not alien to each other ; the difference 
is simply in the prevailing moods. 

For under all the frolicsome gayety and beneath the surface 
ironies of this log of " The Quaker City " there is a solid sense 
of the realities of human life. Over against the pure fun of 
such episodes as the Fourth of July celebration on the high seas 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 389 

is a steady run of satire at the traditionalized affectations of the 
American who pretended to enjoy the things that he ought 
and attempted to shake off the manners of Bird City when he 
registered in his Paris hotel. His gibes at cultural insincerity, 
however, did not degenerate into a fusillade of cheap cynicisms 
at everything old. Whatever contempt he felt for the antiques 
of the tradesmen was overshadowed by the solemnity with which 
the evidence of the passing centuries impressed him. He may 
not have rendered the " old masters " their full deserts, but he 
entered a cathedral with respect, walked in reverent silence 
among the ruins of the Holy Land, and felt in the Alps the 
presence of the Most High. " Notwithstanding it is only the 
record of a picnic," he wrote in the preface, "it has a purpose, 
which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to 
see Europe and the East, if he looked at them with his own 
eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those 
countries before him." So he wrote this book out of the fullness 
of his heart as well as out of the abundance of his humor. 
There was in him a natural acumen which for want of a better 
name we may call wisdom. His instinctive perceptions were 
usually right. 

The fundamental Mark Twain was an increasingly serious 
man. Before he was fifty years old his precocious daughter had 
written in her journal, " He is known to the public as a humorist, 
but he has much more in him that is earnest than that is 
humorous." And again : " Whenever we are all alone at home 
nine times out of ten he talks about some very earnest subject 
(with an occasional joke thrown in), and he a good deal more 
often talks upon such subjects than upon the other kind. He 
is as much a philosopher as anything, I think." There were many 
external reasons for his turn of mind. His romantic passage 
through life from obscure poverty to wealth and fame, with the 
depressing chapters of his temporary business reverses, height- 
ened his native respect for the few blessings that are really 
worth while. His repeated travels, culminating with his trip 



390 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

around the world, the honors that came to him, the social dis- 
tinctions that were showered on him, his friendships with 
thinking men, his bereavements, all contributed to the same 
end of making him consider the ways of the world and of the 
maker thereof. In a further comment his astute little daughter 
went near to the heart of the matter when she wrote quaintly, 
" I think he could have done a great deal in this direction if 
he had studied while young, for he seems to enjoy reasoning 
out things, no matter what ; in a great many such directions 
he has greater ability than in the gifts which have made him 
famous." "If he had studied while young" Mark Twain might 
have gained a knowledge of the progressions in philosophic 
thought that would have steadied him in his own thinking. 
Yet possibly it would have made little difference, for his think- 
ing was at the same time all his own and altogether in the drift 
of nineteenth-century thought. 

With an initial distrust of conventionalized thinking he came 
to his own analysis of the prevailing religious views. His reason 
was alert to challenge theology wherever it was at odds with 
science. He found nothing in the Bible to question the assump- 
tion that Man was the crowning triumph of his Creator, but 
everything in evolutionary doctrine to suggest that Man was 
only a link in a far-evolving succession of higher forms. He 
found a God in the Old Testament who was " an irascible, vin- 
dictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master," though in 
the ordering of the material universe he appeared to be steadfast, 
beneficent, and fair. His reason thus unseated his faith in the 
Scriptures and thereby his confidence in the creeds founded 
upon them. He lost the God of the Hebrews only to find his 
own " in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps," 
..." a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of 
ages, upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them ; 
and would judge a million more — and still be there, watching 
unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and 
the earth have become a vacant desolation." 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 391 

For the after-life he could find no such assurance as he could 
for a Creator. For many men of his generation, and the one 
just before, the solution when they found themselves in such a 
quandary was to take refuge in the authority of the dogmas 
they had set out to question ; many of the most radical came 
back with relief to the protection of the Roman Catholic faith ; 
but Mark Twain could not find his way into the harbor, glad 
as he might have been for the anchorage. There is a deep 
pathos in the many passages of which the following is a type : 

To read that in a book written by a monk far back in the Middle 
Ages would surprise no one ; it would sound natural and proper ; but 
when it is seriously stated in the middle of the nineteenth century, by 
a man of finished education, an LL.D., M.A., and an archseological 
magnate, it sounds strangely enough. Still I would gladly change my 
unbelief for Neligan's faith, and let him make the conditions as hard 
as he pleased. 

In spite of all his yearnings he never could achieve for him- 
self the assurance " of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
not seen " ; so that his most clearly formulated profession of 
faith was in reality a pathetic profession of doubts : 

I believe in God the Almighty .... I think the goodness, the justice 
and the mercy of God are manifested in his works ; I perceive they 
are manifested toward me in this life; the logical conclusion is that 
they will be manifested toward me in the life to come, if there should 
be one. 

Here again, as in his discrimination between " antiques " and 
antiquity, Mark Twain kept clear of a despairing cynicism and 
held to the distinction between what Emerson called "historical 
Christianity" and the ideals from which its adherents have 
fallen away. He judged the religion of his countrymen by its 
social and national fruits, and he was filled with wrath at the 
indignity of an Episcopal rector's refusal to perform the burial 
service of the actor George Holland and at the extortionate 
demands of the missionaries for indemnities after the Boxer 



392 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Rebellion in China. On the national ideals of Christendom he 
spoke in bitter prophecy in 1908 : 

The gospel of peace is always making a deal of noise, always 
rejoicing in its progress but always neglecting to furnish statistics. 
There are no peaceful nations now. All Christendom is a soldier 
camp. The poor have been taxed in some nations to the starvation 
point to support the giant armaments which Christian governments 
have built up, each to protect itself from the rest of the Christian 
brotherhood, and incidentally to snatch any scrap of real estate left 
exposed by a weaker owner. King Leopold II of Belgium, the most 
intensely Christian monarch, except Alexander VI, that has escaped 
hell thus far, has stolen an entire kingdom in Africa, and in fourteen 
years of Christian endeavor there has reduced" the population from 
thirty millions to fifteen by murder and mutilation and overwork, con- 
fiscating the labor of the helpless natives, and giving them nothing 
in return but salvation and a home in heaven, furnished at the last 
moment by the Christian priest. Within the last generation each 
Christian power has turned the bulk of its attention to finding out 
newer and still newer and more and more effective ways of killing 
Christians, and, incidentally, a pagan now and then ; and the surest 
way to get rich quickly in Christ's earthly kingdom is to invent a kind 
of gun that can kill more Christians at one shot than any other exist- 
ing kind. All the Christian nations are at it. The more advanced they 
are, the bigger and more destructive engines of war they create. 

Such doubts as to the future and depression at surrounding 
events have led many an inquirer to a relaxation in his moral 
standards and in his personal conduct ; but in Mark Twain his 
rectitude was as deeply grounded as his humor — both, indeed, 
flowing from the same source. Throughout his books he upheld 
the simple virtues — common honesty ; fidelity to the family ; 
kindness to brutes, to the weak or suffering, and to the primi- 
tive peoples. His ironies and his satires were always diluted 
at unworthy objects, the varied forms of selfishness and insin- 
cerity ; and his answer to " What is Happiness ? " is contained 
in the admonition, " Diligently train your ideals upward and 
still upward, toward a summit where you will find your chief est 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 393 

pleasure in conduct which, while contenting you, will be sure 
to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the community." 

Not until the last years of his life did readers begin to take 
Mark Twain seriously ; now they are coming to appreciate him. 
He has been fortunate in his literary champions — biographers, 
critics, and expositors — and incomparably so in the loving 
interpretation, " My Mark Twain," by his intimate friend, 
William Dean Howells. This concludes : " Out of a nature 
rich and fertile beyond any that I have ever known, the mate- 
rial given him by the Mystery that makes a man and then 
leaves him to make himself over, he wrought a character of 
high nobility upon a foundation of clear and solid truth. . . . 
It is in vain that I try to give a notion of the intensity with 
which he pierced to the heart of life, and the breadth of vision 
with which he compassed the whole world, and tried for the 
reason of things, and then left trying. . . . Next . I saw him 
dead. ... I looked a moment at the face I knew so well ; and 
it was patient with the patience I had so often seen in it ; 
something of puzzle, a great silent dignity, an assent to what 
must be from the depths of a nature whose tragical serious- 
ness broke in the laughter which the unwise took for the whole 
of him. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes — I knew them 
all — and all the rest of our sages, poets, seers, critics, humor- 
ists ; they were like one another and like other literary men ; 
but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our 
literature." 

BOOK LIST 
Individual Authors 

Bret Harte. Works. Standard Library Edition. 20 vols. During 

his lifetime his works were issued in forty-nine successive volumes 

^ between 1867 and 1902. Of these seven were poetry, and of the prose 

works two were novels. The remainder were made up of short units, 

mostly narrative. 

Biographies 

BoYNTON, H. W. Bret Harte. 1905. 

Merwin, H. C. The Life of Bret Harte, with some Account of the 
California Pioneers. 191 1. 



394 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Pattee, F. L. American Literature since 1870, chap. iv. 1915. 
Pemberton, T. E. Life of Bret Harte. 1903. 

Mark Twain. Works. Writings of Mark Twain. 1910. 25 vols. 
(These have been supplemented by various posthumous articles in 
Harper'' s Magazine which have been pubUshed, and will doubtless 
be further added to, in supplementary volumes.) His works appeared 
in book form originally as follows: The Jumping Frog, 1867; The 
Innocents Abroad, 1869; Autobiography and First Romance, 1871; 
Roughing It, 1872; The Gilded Age (with C. D. Warner), 1873; 
Sketches New and Old, 1875; Tom Sawyer, 1876; The Stolen 
White Elephant, 1878; A Tramp Abroad, 1880; The Prince and 
the Pauper, 1881 ; Life on the Mississippi, 1883 ; Huckleberry Finn, 
1 884 ; A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur, 1 889 ; 
The American Claimant, 189 1 ; Tom Sawyer Abroad, 1 894 ; Pudd'n- 
head Wilson, 1 894 ; Joan of Arc, 1 896 ; Tom Sawyer Detective, 
and Other Stories, 1 896 ; Following the Equator, 1 897 ; Christian 
Science, 1907; Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, 1907; Is 
Shakespeare Dead, 1908. 

Bibliography 

A volume by M. Johnson. 1910. 

Chronological list of Mark Twain's work published and otherwise, 
Appendix X, Vol. Ill, of Mark Twain, by A. B. Paine (see below). 

Biography and Criticism 

The standard life is by Albert Bigelow Paine. 1912. 3 vols. 

The following list does not attempt to represent the periodical 
material except for one symposium in The Bookman. See the Reader's 
Guide to Periodical Literature. The volume for 191C-1914 alone 
contains seventy-six items. 

Clemens, W. M. Mark Twain : his Life and Work. 1892. 

Henderson, Archibald. Mark Twain. 1912. 

HowELLS, W. D. My Mark Twain. 1910. 

Mark Twain's Letters (edited by A. B. Paine). 1917. 

Matthews, Brander. Inquiries and Opinions. 1907. 

Paine, A. B. A Boy's Life of Mark Twain. 191 6. 

Pattee, F. L. American Literature since 1870, chap. iii. 1915. 

Phelps, W. L. Essays on Modern Novelists. 1910. 

Sherman, Stuart. Fifty Years of American Idealism (edited by 
Gustav Pollak). 1915. Also in On Contemporary Literature. 
1918. 

Wallace, Elizabeth. Mark Twain and the Happy Island. 1913. 

The Bookman, Vol. XXXI, pp. 363-396 : Mark Twain in San Fran- 
cisco, by Bailey Millard; Mark Twain, an Appreciation, by 



THE WEST AND MARK TWAIN 395 

Henry M. Alden. Best Sellers of Yesterday: The Innocents 
Abroad, by A. B. Maurice ; Mark Twain in Clubland, by W. H. 
Rideing; Mark Twain a Century Hence, by Harry Thurston 
Peck ; The Story of Mark Twain's Debts, by F. A. King. 



TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Note, as you read any one of Mark Twain's longer stories, pass- 
ages which are evidently autobiographical. Do these throw any light 
on the history of his neighborhoods and his period or are they 
pufely personal in their interest? 

Read the essay " How to tell a Story " and test it by Mark 
Twain's method in one of his shorter stories and in one of his 
after-dinner speeches as printed in the appendix to Vol. Ill of 
A. B. Paine's " Life." 

Read a few pages at random for observations on Mark Twain's 
diction. Is it more like Emerson's or Lowell's, more like Whitman's 
or Longfellow's ? 

Does Mark Twain's consistent interest in history appear in his 
writing through the use of allusion and comparison ? 

Read for the employment of unexpected humor. Are passages in 
which it suddenly appears the result of forethought or merely the 
result of whim ? 

Read for Mark Twain's resort to serious satire. To what objects 
of satire does he most frequently revert ? 

Do you find a distinction between Mark Twain's attitude toward 
religion and his attitude toward religious people ? 

Mark Twain is held up as an example of Americanisfn. Do his 
writings give evidence of patriotism in the usual sense of the word ? 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 

In the development of a Western literature Sill and Miller, 
like Bret Harte and Mark Twain and like all the other adult 
Californians in the pioneer period, were imported from the 
East, but they were not such temporary sojourners as the two 
prose writers. Sill, after an Eastern education, enjoyed two 
prolonged residences in California, and in his journeyings back 
and forth became a kind of cultural medium, bringing some- 
thing of Eastern tradition to the Pacific coast and interpreting 
the West to the East. Of the four men Joaquin Miller was 
the most completely and continuously Western. He went out 
almost as early as Mark Twain did, lived during boyhood in 
far more primitive circumstances, and, after varied travels in the 
East and in Europe and intimate association with the world of 
letters, returned to the West for his old age, dying "on the 
heights " in sight of the Golden Gate. 

EDWARD ROWLAND SILL (1841-1887) 

Sill was born in Windsor, Connecticut, in 184 1. In 1861 
he was graduated from Yale, where he had developed more 
clearly than anything else a dislike for narrowly complacent 
orthodoxy of thought and conduct and had acquired a strain 
of mild misanthropy which characterized him for the next sev- 
eral years. His health sent him West, by sailing-vessel around 
Cape Horn, and he stayed in California occupied in a variety 
of jobs until 1866. A winter's study satisfied him that he 
should not enter the ministry, and a shorter experiment that 
he could not succeed in New York journalism. In 1868 he 
396 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 397 

published the only volume of poems during his lifetime, the 
little duodecimo entitled " The Hermitage." From this year to 
1882 he was occupied in teaching — first in the high schools at 
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, and Oakland, California, and from 1874 
on in the department of English in the University of California. 
Here he had the double distinction of serving under President 
Daniel C. Oilman and over Josiah Royce, whom he secured as 
assistant. A letter of 1882 gives as the reason for his resigna- 
tion that his " position had become intolerable for certain 
reasons that are not for pen and ink," in spite of which ill 
health is usually assigned as the cause. In 1883 a second 
volume, "The Venus of Milo, and Other Poems" was privately 
printed. For the rest of his life he lived at Cuyahoga Falls 
again, writing frequently under the name of Andrew Hedbrook 
for the Atlantic, whose pages were opened to his prose and 
verse through the appreciative interest of the editor, his fellow- 
poet, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. He died in 1887. 

During his last thirty years, from his entrance to Yale in 
1857 to his death in 1887, Edward Rowland Sill experienced 
American life in a variety of ways which were not exactly par- 
alleled in the career of any of his contemporaries. He did not 
belong to any literary group. Because of a certain timidity, 
which was probably more artistic than social, he did not even 
become acquainted with the well-known authors who were his 
neighbors while he was in Cambridge and New York City ; 
but his natural inclination to find his proper place and do his 
proper work led him to partake of the life on both coasts and 
in the Mississippi Valley and to contribute richly to the lead- 
ing periodicals of the East and the West — the Atlantic and 
the Overland Monthly. 

By inclination he was from the outset a cultured radical. 
He loved the best that the past had to offer, he wanted to 
make the will of God prevail, and he was certain that between 
lethargy and crassness the millennium was being long delayed. 
It was lethargy which characterized Yale and New Haven for 



398 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

him.i The curriculum was dull in itself and little redeemed by 
any vital teaching or by reference to current thought. The 
faculty, wrote one of his classmates, " gave us a rare example 
of single-hearted, self-sacrificing, and unswerving devotion to 
duty, as they saw it. But they had not the gift to see much of 
it, and so their example lacked inspiration. It is astounding 
that so much knowledge (one-sided though it was) and so much 
moral worth could have existed side by side with so much 
obtuseness." The natural consequence was that Sill picked up 
what crumbs of comfort he could from miscellaneous reading, 
was "rusticated" for neglect of his routine duties, wrote Car- 
lylesque essays of discontent, and went out from graduation 
with a deep feeling of protest against what he supposed was 
the world. "Morning" and "The Clocks of Gnoster Town, 
or Truth by Majority" are the chief poetical results of this 
experience. 

California offered him a relief, but too much of a relief. He 
was always loyal to his closest college friends and to his ideals 
for Yale. The license of a frontier mining country did not in 
any sense supply the freedom which New Haven had denied 
him. His greatest pleasure out there was in the companionship 
of an intellectual and music-loving "Yale " family. And so his 
revolt from the world and his return to it, which are motivated 
in " The Hermitage " by the charms of a lovely blonde, had a 
deeper cause in the facts of his spiritual adolescence. All this 
pioneering was in the nature of self-discovery. For a while he 
inclined to the study of law because he thought the discipline 
of legal training would lead him toward the truth. Then after 
returning to the East he came by way of theological study 
and journalism to his final work : " . . . only the great school- 
master Death will ever take me through these higher mathe- 
matics of the religious principia — this side of his schooling, 
in these primary grades, I never can preach. — I shall teach 
school, I suppose." 

J See chap, ii, " His Life at College," in W. B. Parker's Life. 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 399 

Now that he had left it, however, the charm of Cahfornia 
was upon him. Although he was later to write in sardonic 
comment on the dry season. 

Come where my stubbly hillside slowly dries, 
And fond adhesive tarweeds gently shade, 

he was really in love with the great open vistas, the gentleness 
of the climate, and with the Californians' " independence of 
judgment ; their carelessness of what a barbarian might think, 
so long as he came from beyond the border ; their apparent 
freedom in choosing what manner of men they should be ; 
their ready and confident speech." " Christmas in California," 
"Among the Redwoods," and "The Departure of the Pilot" 
are examples of much more California verse and of the spirit 
of many and many of his letters. Yet for this radical thinker 
institutional life was somewhat cramping even here. It is an 
unhappy fact that colleges and universities, devised as systems 
for educating the average by the slightly more than average, 
have rarely been flexible enough in their management to give 
fair harborage for creative genius either in front of or behind 
the desk. Sill's experience was not unusual ; it only went to 
prove that in academic America East was West and West was 
East and that the two had never been parted. So finally the 
young poet, still young after two periods of residence on each 
coast, settled down again to quiet literary work in the little 
Ohio town. There were only five years left him. 

Throughout his work, but increasingly in these later years, 
there is a fine and simple clarity of execution. The something 
in him which withheld him from calling on Longfellow and 
the others when in Cambridge, or even on his fellow-collegian 
Stedman in New York, made him slow to publish, rigorous in 
self-criticism, and eager to print anonymously or under a 
pseudonym. He wrote painstakingly, followed his contribu- 
tions to the editors with substituted versions, and revised even 
in the proof. Although he was a wide reader, he was usually 



400 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

independent of immediate models, and always so in his later 
work. He avoided the stock phrases of poetry, but often 
equaled the best of them himself : " the whispering pine, Surf 
sound of an aerial sea," " Struck through with slanted shafts 
of afternoon," " When the low music makes a dusk of sound," 
are representatives of his own fresh coinage. 

A reading of Sill's poetry would reveal much of his life 
story without other explanation. An acquaintance with his 
biography makes most of the rest clear. The poems relate in 
succession to his college experience, his lifelong search for 
truth, his Western voyage, his revolt against the world and his 
return to it, his residence in California. They show in parts 
of "The Hermitage" and in "Five Lives" his rebellion at the 
incursions of science. They show, however, that in his own 
mind a greater conflict than that between science and religion 
was the conflict, as he saw it, between religion and the church. 

For my part I long to " fall in " with somebody. This picket duty 
is monotonous. I hanker after a shoulder on this side and the other. 
I can't agree in belief (or expressed belief — Lord knows what the 
villains really think, at home) with the " Christian " people, nor in 
spirit with the Radicals, etc. . . . Many, here and there, must be living 
the right way, doing their best, hearty souls, and I'd like to go 'round 
the world for the next year and take tea with them in succession. 

The tone of this letter, written in 1870, was to prevail more 
and more in his later years. He had passed out from the rather 
desperate seriousness of young manhood. He had found that 
on the whole life was good. He was no less serious at bottom 
than before, but in the years approaching the fullness of his 
maturity he let his natural antic humor play without restraint. 
As a consequence the poems after 1875 tend as a group to 
deal more often with slighter themes and in lighter vein. The 
human soul did not cease to interest him, but the human mind 
interested Sill the husband and the teacher more than they 
had interested Sill the youthful misanthrope. Thus the con- 
fidence in "Force," the subtlety in "Her Explanation," the 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 401 

mockery in "The Agile Sonneteer," and the whimsical truth 
of '" Momentous Words " were all recorded after he was forty 
years of age. 

It is impossible not to feel the incompleteness of his career. 
It was cut off without warning while Sill was in a state of 
happy relief from the perplexities of earlier years. He was 
gaining in ease and power of workmanship. There was a 
modest demand, in the economic sense, for his work. There 
was everything to stimulate him to authorship and much to 
suggest that in time he would pass beyond this genial good 
humor into a period of serene and broadening maturity. Pos- 
sibly in another decade he would have come into some sense 
of nationalism which would have illuminated for him the wide 
reaches of America which he had passed and repassed. The 
Civil War had meant nothing to him : "What is the grandeur 
of serving a state, whose tail is stinging its head to death like 
a scorpion ! " Since war times he had passed out of hermitage 
into society, and with the Spanish War he might have seen 
America and the larger human family with opened eyes. But 
at forty-six the arc of his life was snapped off short. 



JOAQUIN MILLER (1841-1913) 

Cincinnatus Hiner Miller was born in 1841. "My cradle 
was a covered wagon, pointed west. I was born in a covered 
wagon, I am told, at or about the time it crossed the line divid- 
ing Indiana from Ohio." His father was born of Scotch immi- 
grant stock — a natural frontiersman, but a man with a love 
of books and a teacher among his fellow-wanderers. In 185.2, 
moved by the same restlessness that had taken the Clemens 
family to Missouri seventeen years earlier, the Millers started 
on the three-thousand-mile roundabout journey to Oregon, find- 
ing their way without roads over the plains and mountains in 
a trip lasting more than seven months. It was from this that 
the boy gained his lasting respect for the first pioneers. 



402 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

O bearded, stalwart, westmost men, 
So tower-like, so Gothic built ! 
A kingdom won without the guilt 
Of studied battle, that hath been 
Your blood's inheritance. . . . Your heirs 
Know not your tombs : The great plough-shares 
Cleave softly through the mellow loam 
Where you have made eternal home, 
And set no sign. Your epitaphs 
Are writ in furrows. 

After two years in the new Oregon home the coming poet 
ran away with a brother to seek gold. They seem to have 
separated, and in the following years the one who came to 
celebrity survived a most amazing series of primitive experi- 
ences and primitive hardships among the Indians. Part of his 
time, however, with " Mountain Joe " preserved his contact 
with books, for this man, a graduate of Heidelberg, helped 
him with his Latin. The boy returned to Oregon early enough 
to earn a diploma at Columbia University in 1859, — an insti- 
tution in which the collegiate quality was doubtless entirely 
restricted to its name. According to Miller the eagerness of 
study there was no less intense than the zest for every other 
kind of experience among the early settlers. In the next 
decade he had many occupations. For a while he was express 
messenger, carrying gold dust, but safe from the Indians, who 
had become his trusted friends. " Those matchless night-rides 
under the stars, dashing into the Orient doors of dawn before 
me as the sun burst through the shining mountain pass, — 
this brought my love of song to the surface." Later he was 
editor of a pacifist newspaper which was suppressed for alleged 
treason. But the largest proportion of his time was spent at 
the law. From 1866 to 1870 he held a minor judgeship. 

Throughout all this time — he was now nearly thirty — 
Miller's primary passion had been for poetry and for casting 
in poetic form something of the rich, vivid romance of the great 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 403 

West and Southwest. In 1868 a thin booklet, "Specimens," 
was issued and in San Francisco, in 1869, "Joaquin et al." 
For naming his book in this fashion instead of "Joaquin and 
Other Poems," his legal friends repaid him with a derisive nick- 
name that finally became the one by which the world knows 
him. Bret Harte, then in an influential editorship, gave the 
book a fair review, but in general it was slightingly treated. 

Impulsive in mood and accustomed to little respect for the 
hardships of travel. Miller started East, and three months 
later, as he records, was kneeling at the grave of Bums with 
a definite resolve to complete his life in the country of his fore- 
fathers. In the volume of poems of his own selection he wrote 
of "Vale! America," " I do not like this bit of impatience 
nor do I expect anyone else to like it, and only preserve it 
here as a sort of landmark or journal in my journey through 
life." But for the moment in his sensitiveness he doubtless 
wrote quite truly : 

I starve, I die, 
Each day of my life. Ye pass me by 
Each day, and laugh as ye pass ; and when 
Ye come, I start in my place as ye come, 
And lean, and would speak, — but my lips are dumb. 

He had, of course, no reputation in London, where he soon 
settled near the British Museum, and the period was an unpro- 
pitious one for poetry. A descendant and namesake of the 
John Murray who had refused to deal with " The Sketch 
Book" (see p. 118 ) gave a like response to Miller's offer of 
his " Pacific Poems." But Miller carried the risk-taking spirit 
of the pioneer to the point of privately printing one hundred 
copies and sending them broadcast for review, with the result 
of an immediate and enthusiastic recognition. The " Songs of 
the Sierras " were soon regularly published in London, and the 
poet was received in friendliest fashion as a peer of Dean 
Stanley, Lord Houghton, Robert Browning, and all the pre- 
Raphaelite brotherhood. 



404 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The period from 1873 to 1887 is distinctly a middle zone 
in Miller's career. The restless eagerness of his formative 
years still dominated him, but it led him for the most part to 
rapid changes, most of which were in the world of men and 
many of which were in the largest cities. His moves on both 
continents are difficult to follow and have not been clearly 
unraveled by any biographer. One can get a fairly clear idea 
of their nature if not of their order by an attentive reading of 
his poems and particularly of the chatty footnotes with which 
he accompanied the collections he edited. He continued to use 
the frontier experience of the early days. His most character- 
istic poems were stories of thrilling experience in the open. In 
" My Own Story," " Life Amongst the Modocs," " Unwritten 
History, Paquita," and "My Life Among the Indians" he 
recorded the same material in prose. In certain other poems, 
particularly the " Isles of the Amazons " and " The Baroness 
of New York," he set in contrast the romance of the forest 
with the petty conventions of the metropolis, and in " The 
Song of the South " he attempted — not to his own satisfaction 
— to do for the Mississippi what he had done for the moun- 
tains. Shorter lyrics show his response to world events such 
as the death of Garfield and the American war with Spain. 
In two poems of 1901 he wrote in withering condemnation 
of England's policy toward the Boers. 

In all the material of this middle period the dominant 
feature is his praise of the elemental forces of nature. Nature 
itself for him was always dynamic. The sea and the forest at 
rest suggested to him their latent powers. His best scenes deal 
with storm, flood, and fire, and when occasionally he painted a 
calm background, as in the departure of "The Last Taschastas," 
the burnished beauty of the setting is in strong contrast with 
the violence of the episode. In human experience he most 
admired the exertion of primitive strength. It is this which 
endeared the early pioneers to him. Man coping with nature 
thrilled him, but for human conflict he had little sympathy. 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 405 

His women were Amazonian in physique and character — a 
singularly consistent type, almost a recurrence of one woman 
of various complexions. In the judgment of Whitman — his 
Washington intimate of two years — he must have fallen from 
grace in his treatment of love. If he did not vie (to paraphrase 
Burroughs) "with the lascivious poets in painting it as the 
forbidden" passion, he did compete with the fleshly school in 
depicting all its charms. Yet even here in that strange con- 
cluding romance " Light " he struggled to overcome the 
sensuous with the spiritual element. 

The form of all this mid-period work was quite conventional 
and, in view of the content, smacked strangely of the library 
and the drawing room. He ran as a rule to four-stressed lines, 
indulged in insistent riming, rarely missing a chance, and cast 
his stanzas into a jogging and seldom-varied rhythm. In their 
assault on the ear his verses have little delicacy of appeal. 
They blare at the reader like the brasses in an orchestral 
fortissimo. They clamor at him with the strident regularity 
of a Sousa march. This dominant measure accords well with 
the rude subject matter of his poems, — the march of the pio- 
neer, the plod of oxen yoked to the prairie schooner, the roar 
of prairie fire or of the wind through the forest ; and, with a 
diiference, the hoof-beat of galloping horses or of stampeding 
buffalo. And it expresses the rhetorical magniloquence which 
is the natural fruit of life in a country of magnificent distances. 
At the same time Miller found a poetical justification for his 
style in the narrative rhythms of Scott and Byron and Coleridge, 
by whom he was often and evidently influenced". Until he 
was well past mid-career he was boyishly open to direct literary 
influences. He had no theory of prosody ; his originality was 
inherent in the harmony between himself and his wild material ; 
so he tried his hand at writing in the manner of this, that, and 
the other man. 

In his final revisions, however, he was ruthless in rejecting 
his imitative passages and in his reduction of earlier work to 



406 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

what was unqualifiedly his own. This is best illustrated by 
what he did to " The Baroness of New York " before he had 
done with it. In its original form of 1877 it filled a whole 
volume, a poem — not a novel, as often erroneously stated — 
in two parts. The former is a sea-island romance of love and 
desertion after the manner of Scott ; the sequel presents Adora 
in New York as the Baroness du Bois, where she lives in scorn- 
ful indifference until the original lover turns up with a title 
of his own and carries her off in triumph ; this second part 
is in the manner of Byron. When Miller included this poem 
in his collected edition of 1897, he dropped all the Byronic, 
metropolitan portion and reduced the rest to less than half — 
the fraction that was quite his own. 

Such a revision was in the fullest sense the work of matured 
judgment. Miller was now in his last long period of picturesque 
retirement bn " The Heights," looking back over his prolific 
output of former years, recognizing the good in it, and depend- 
ing upon the public to reject what had no right to a long life. 
At times he still wrote poem-stories located in settings of 
tumultuous abundance, but he supplemented these with more 
and more frequent short lyrics, and he studied continually to 
achieve that simplicity which is seldom the result of anything 
but perfected artistry. In 1902 he wrote : 

Shall we ever have an American literature ? Yes, when we leave 
sound and words to the winds. American science has swept time and 
space aside. American science dashes along at fifty, sixty miles an 
hour ; but American literature still lumbers along in the old-fashioned 
English stage-coach at ten miles an hour ; and sometimes with a red- 
coated outrider blowing a horn. We must leave all this behind us. 
We have not time for words. A man who uses a great, big, sounding 
word, when a short one will do, is to that extent a robber of time. 
A jewel that depends greatly on its setting is not a great jewel. 
When the Messiah of American literature comes, he will come singing, 
so far as may be, in words of one syllable. 

In the main his hope now was to pass from objective poetry 
to "the vision of worlds beyond," — a vision which he more 



/ 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 407 

nearly approached in " Sappho and Phaon " than in any other 
poem, and a vision for which the motive is stated in the second 
stanza of " Adios " : 

Could I but teach man to believe — 
Could I but make small men to grow, 
To break frail spider-webs that weave 
About their thews and bind them low ; 
Could I but sing one song and slay 
Grim Doubt ; I then could go my way 
In tranquil silence, glad, serene, 
And satisfied, from off the scene. 
But ah, this disbelief, this doubt, 
This doubt of God, this doubt of good, — 
The damned spot will not out. 

In the meanwhile, by way of a practical application of his 
ideals, Miller was attempting to lead his life sanely and, by an 
association that suggests the old Greek academy, to point the 
way for the younger generation of poets. In his final note to 
the 1902 edition he described himself as living on "a sort of 
hillside Bohemia." No lessons were taught there except, by 
example, the lesson of living. Three or four " tenets or prin- 
ciples of life " were insisted upon : that man is good ; that 
there is nothing ugly in nature ; that man is immortal ; that 
nature wastes no thing and no time ; and that man should 
learn the lesson of economy. So in a way he returned to 
the simple conditions in which his earliest life had grounded 
his affections. 

Miller naturally invites comparison with Mark Twain and 
Walt Whitman. The likeness starts with the simple origins 
of all three and with the rough-and-ready circumstances of 
their upbringing. It continues with their resultant sympathetic 
feeling for the common men and women who make up the 
mass of humankind. It is maintained in their conscious per- 
sonal picturesqueness : Whitman gray-bearded, open-collared, 
wearing his hat indoors or out; Mark Twain in his white 
» serge, regardless of season ; and Miller with long hair, velvet 



408 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

jacket, and high boots, — evidence of the humanizing personal 
vanity in each which was quite apart from the genuine bigness 
of their characters. It follows in the high seriousness of all 
three. And it is confirmed in the fact of their early recog- 
nition in England and their less respectful reception at home 
(see pp. 293 and 367). Miller, like these others, was in the 
70's what the Old World chose to think the typical American 
ought to be. He was fresher to them than those other Ameri- 
cans whom their countrymen were eagerly describing as "the 
American Burns," "the American Wordsworth," "the Amer- 
ican Scott," and " the American Tennyson " ; and to this 
degree — though he was not a representative of the prevailing 
American literature — he was actually a representative of the 
country itself and especially of the vast stretch from the Missis- 
sippi to the Pacific. For Miller and the America he knew best 
were both full of natural vigor, full of hope and faith, conscious 
of untold possibilities in the nearer and the remoter future, and, 
withal, relatively nafve and unformed. 



BOOK LIST 
Individual Authors 

Edward Rowland Sill. Works. The Political Works of. 1906. 
I vol. His works appeared in book form originally as follows : The 
Hermitage and Other Poems, 1867; Venus of Milo, and Other 
Poems, 1883; Poems, 1887; The Hermitage, and Later Poems, 
1889; Christmas in Calif ornia : a Poem, 1898; Hermione, and Other 
Poems, 1899; Prose, 1900; Poems (Special Edition), 1902; Poems 
(Household Edition), 1906. 
Biography and Criticism 

The best biographical study is Edward Rowland Sill : his Life and 
Work, by W. B. Parker. 191 5. See also Modern Poets and Chris- 
tian Teaching (Gilder, Markham, Sill), by D. G. Downey. 1906. 

Joaquin Miller. Works. Bear Edition. 1909-1910. 6 vols. A single- 
volume "complete" edition was pubHshed in 1892, 1897, and 1904. 
These appeared in book form originally as follows: Specimens, 
1868; Joaquin et al., 1869; Pacific Poems, 1870; Songs of the 
Sierras, 1871 ; Songs of the Sunlands, 1873; Unwritten History: 
Life Amongst the Modocs (with Percival Mulford), 1874; The Ship 



THE WEST IN SILL AND MILLER 409 

in the Desert, 1875; First Families of the Sierras, 1875; Songs of 
the Desert, 1875; The One Fair Woman, 1876; The Baroness of 
New York, 1877 ; Songs of Italy, 1878 ; The Danites in the Sierras, 
1881; Shadows of Shasta, 1881; Poems (Complete Edition), 1882; 
Forty-nine: a California Drama, 1882; '49: or, the Gold-seekers 
of the Sierras, 1884; Memorie and Rime, 1884; The Destruction 
of Gotham, 1 886 ; Songs of the Mexican Seas, 1 887 ; In Classic 
Shades and Other Poems, 1890 ; The Building of the City Beautiful : 
a Poetic Romance, 1 893 ; Songs of the Soul, 1 896 ; Chants for the 
Boer, 1900 ; True Bear Stories, 1900 ; As It Was in the Beginning, 
1903; Light: a Narrative Poem, 1907. 

Biography and Criticism 

There is no adequate biography or even biographical study. Of the 
historians of American literature only Churton Collins, C. F. 
Richardson, G. E. Woodberry, and F. L. Pattee (" American Lit- 
erature since 1870 ") accord Miller serious attention. The auto- 
biographical preface to the Bear Edition and the same material 
scattered through the one-volume editions are the raw stuff for 
interpretation of Miller's character and aim. These can be sup- 
plemented by his own article in the Independent on " What is 
Poetry .? " See also Current Literature, Vol. XLVIII, p. 574. 

See the historians above mentioned and the following review articles : 
Academy, Vol. II, p. 301; Vol. LIII, p. 181; Arena, Vol. XII, 
p. 86; Vol. IX, p. 553; Vol. XXXVII, p. 271; Current Opinion, 
Vol. LIV, p. 318 ; Dial, Vol. LIV, p. 165 ; Fraser's, Vol. LXXXIV, 
p. 346; Godefs, Vol. XCIV, p. 52; Lippincotfs, Vol. XXXVIII, 
p. 106 ; Munsefs, Vol. IX, p. 308 ; Nation, Vol. XXVII, p. 336 ; 
Vol. XIII, p. 196 ; Vol. XVIII, p. 77 ; Vol. XCVI, pp. 169, 187, 
230, 544- 

TOPICS AND PROBLEMS 

Compare the use of California and California life by Sill with 
use of the same material by Joaquin Miller or Bret Harte or 
Mark Twain. 

Compare Sill's " Hermitage" with Robert Frost's "A Boy's Will." 
What is the likeness in the general drift of the two and what are 
the essential differences in the treatments of the theme ? 

Read W. B. Parker's " Life of Sill " with especial reference to 
Sill's letters and the degree to which they reveal his humor and 
his seriousness. Note poems which correspond in spirit or in content 
with given letters. 



41 o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Compare the treatment of primitive Western life and adventure by 
Miller with use of the same material by Mark Twain or Bret Harte. 

Read Miller for evidences of literary influence upon him of Scott 
or Byron or Coleridge or Browning. 

Read Miller's " Song of the South " and his explanatory remarks 
on it and compare Longfellow's treatment of the Mississippi; or 
compare Masters's preface to his volume " Toward the Gulf " and 
his poems on the same subject. 

Note the insistence of Miller on the idea that life is power and in 
his later poems the increasing respect for reflection. 

Compare Miller's " Columbus " with Lowell's " Columbus " and 
Lanier's " Sonnets on Columbus." 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE RISE OF FICTION; WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

It is very seldom in the history of Hterature that important 
developments take place without long preliminaries. From 
period to period new emphasis is placed on old ideas, and old 
forms are given the right of way in literary fashion. In the 
course of American literature, roughly speaking, the dominating 
forms of literature have been in succession : exposition and 
travel during the colonial period ; poetry, satirical and epic, in 
the Revolutionary period ; poetry in all its broader aspects 
during the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. After 
the Civil War for fifty years fiction came to the front ; from 
about 1900 on a new emphasis was given to the stage and 
the playwright ; at present the most striking fact in world 
literature is the broadening and deepening of the poetic cur- 
rents again. Yet all of these forms are always existent. To 
speak of the rise of fiction, then, is simply to acknowledge 
the increased attention which for a period it demanded. 

It is frequently said that America's chief contribution to 
world literature has been the short story as developed since 
the Civil War. Yet in America the ground had been prepared 
for this development by many writers, — among them, as 
already mentioned in this history, Washington Irving with 
"The Sketch Book" in 1819 (see pp. 118-131), Hawthorne 
with " Twice-Told Tales " in 1838 (see pp. 240 and 243), Poe 
with his various contributions to periodical literature in the 
1840's (see pp. 185-187), Mark Twain with "The Jumping 
Frog" of 1867, Bret Harte with "The Luck of Roaring 
Camp " of 1870 and the great bulk of his subsequent contribu- 
tions (see p. 381), and Thomas Bailey Aldrich with " Marjorie 



412 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Daw" of 1873 and his other volumes of short stories. In the 
meanwhile the novel had had its consecutive history — from 
Brockden Brown beginning with 1798 (see pp. 100-109) to 
Cooper in 1820 (see pp. 141-157), William Gilmore Simms 
from 1833 (see p. 344), Hawthorne from 1850 on (see pp. 
236-251), Mrs. Stowe from 1852 (see pp. 299-309), and 
Holmes from 1861 (see pp. 320, 321). And these writers of 
short and long fiction are only the outstanding story-tellers in 
America between the beginning of the century and the years 
just after the Civil War, 

In a chapter such as this no exhaustive survey is possible, 
for it involves scores of writers and hundreds of books. The 
vital movement started with a fresh and vivid treatment of 
native American material, and it moved in a great sweeping 
curve from the West down past the Gulf up through the 
southeastern states into New England, across to the Middle 
West, and back into the Ohio valley until every part of the 
country was represented by its expositors. The course of this 
newer provincial fiction is suggested by the mention of Mark 
Twain's "Jumping Frog" (1867, California), "The Luck of 
Roaring Camp " of Bret Harte (1870, California), G. W. 
Cable's "Old Creole Days" (1879, Louisiana), "Nights with 
Uncle Remus," by Joel Chandler Harris (1880, Georgia), " In 
the Tennessee Mountains," by Charles Egbert Craddock (1884), 
"In old Virginia," by Thomas Nelson Page (1887), "A New. 
England Nun," by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (1891), "Main- 
Travelled Roads," by Hamlin Garland (1891, the Middle West), 
" Flute and Violin," by James Lane Allen (i 891, the Ohio valley). 

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1837- ) 

The preeminent figure in the field of American fiction 
during the last half century has been William Dean Howells, 
a man who is widely representative of the broad literary 
development in the country and worthy of careful study as an 
artist and as a critic of life. Although he has been an 




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414 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Easterner by residence for nearly half a century, he is the 
greatest contribution of the West — or what was West in his 
youth — to Eastern life and thought. 

He was born in 1837 at Martins Ferry, Ohio, — the second 
of eight children. Perhaps the richness of his character is 
accounted for by the varied strains in his ancestry. On his 
father's side his people were wholly Welsh except his English 
great-grandmother, and on his mother's wholly German except 
his Irish grandfather. His mother he has described as the 
heart of the family, and his father as the soul. The family 
fortunes were in money ways unsuccessful. His father's expe- 
rience as a country editor took him from place to place in a 
succession of ventures which were harrassed by uncertain 
income and heavy debts. These were always paid, but only by 
dint of unceasing effort. The Howells family were, however, 
happy in their concord and in their daily enjoyment of the 
best that books could bring them. Unlike many another youth 
who has struggled into literary fame, William Dean found a 
ready sympathy with his ambitions at home. His experience 
was less like Whitman's than Bryant's. From childhood the 
printing office was his school and almost his only school, for 
the district teachers had little to offer a child of literary 
parentage " whose sense was open to every intimation of 
beauty." Very early his desire for learning led him into what 
he called " self -conducted inquiries " in foreign languages ; and 
with the help of a " sixteen-bladed grammar," a nondescript 
polyglot affair, he acquired in turn a reading knowledge of 
Latin, Greek, Spanish, German, French, and Italian. In the 
meanwhile he was reading and assimilating the popular English 
favorites. It was typical of his experience that Longfellow led 
him to his first studies of the Spanish language, bringing him 
back to Spain, where he had traveled in fancy with Irving. 
Always he was writing, for his life was "filled with literature 
to bursting," and always imitating — now Pope, now Heine, 
now Cervantes, now Shakespeare. 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 415 

As a printer on country journals he had the opportunity to 
place his own wares before the public, often composing in type 
without ever putting pen to paper. His father encouraged 
him to contribute to journals of larger circulation, and the 
experience naturally led him into professional journalism before 
he was of age. It led him also to Columbus, the state capital, 
where he reported the proceedings of the legislature and in 
time rose to the dignity of editorial writer. During these 
years of late youth and early manhood his aspirations were 
like Bret Harte's, all in the direction of poetry, and his earliest 
book was a joint effort with James J. Piatt, " Poems of Two 
Friends," 1859. This was a typical experience in literary 
history. Again and again at the period of a change to a 
new form or, better, a revived artistic form, the literary youth 
has started to write in the declining fashion of his day and 
has been carried over into the rising vogue. " Paradise Lost " 
was first conceived of as a five-act tragedy. " Amelia " and 
" Tom Jones " were preceded by twenty-odd unsuccessful 
comedies. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and " Marmion " 
and "The Lady of the Lake " were all preliminary to " Waverley " 
and the tide of novels that followed. In i860 Howells had 
five poems in the Atlantic and had no expectation of writing 
fiction ; and it was another full decade, after the publication 
of several volumes of sketches and travel observations, before 
he was fairly launched on his real career. 

In Columbus he had come by i860 to a full enjoyment of 
an eager, book-loving group. He was working enthusiastically 
as a journalist, but his knowledge of politics and statecraft did 
not bring him to any vivid sense of the social order. " What 
I wished to do always and evermore was to think and dream 
and talk literature, and literature only, whether in its form of 
prose or of verse, in fiction, or poetry, or criticism. I held it 
a higher happiness to stop at a street corner with a congenial 
young lawyer and enter upon a fond discussion of, say, 
De Quincey's essays than to prove myself worthy the respect 



41 6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of any most eminent citizen who knew not or loved not 
De Quincey." There was a succession of fellow-journalists 
with whom he could have this sort of pleasure, and there were 
houses in town where he could enjoy the finer pleasure of 
talking over with the girls the stories of Thackeray and George 
Eliot and Dickens and Charles Reade as they appeared in 
rapid sequence in book or serial form. "It is as if we did 
nothing then but read late novels and current serials which it 
was essential for us to know one another's minds upon down 
to the instant ; other things might wait, but these things were 
pressing." During these years he developed a liking for the 
social amenities, of which an enjoyment of polite literature was 
a natural expression. Literature was an adornment of life and, 
as he saw it, was confined to an interpretation of individual 
experience. 

With the presidential candidacy of Lincoln, Howells became 
one of his campaign biographers, and after the election and 
a^ period of anxious waiting he received the appointment as 
United States consul to Venice. Upon his return to this 
country he became an Easterner, settling happily in. Boston 
as assistant editor and then as editor in chief of the Atlantic 
Monthly from 1866 to 1881. This was a fulfillment beyond 
his highest hopes. The great New England group were at the 
height of their fame, and his connection with the unrivaled 
literary periodical of America brought him into contact with 
them all. He was ready to begin his own work as a writer 
of novels. 

For the next twenty years he was a thoroughly conventional 
artist, gaining satisfaction and giving pleasure through the 
exercise of his admirable technique. In this period he wrote 
always, to borrow an expression originally applied to Tennyson, 
as though a staid American matron had just left the room : 
a matron who had been nurtured on the reading which gave 
rise to his own literary passions — Goldsmith, Cervantes, 
Irving, Longfellow, Scott, Pope, Mrs. Stowe, Dickens, and 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 417 

Macaulay ; a matron, in short, who was the Lady of the 
Aroostook at forty-five, the mother of a numerous family, and 
aggressively concerned that no book which fell into the hands 
of her daughters should cause the blush of shame to rise upon 
the maiden cheek. He wrote not only on an early experience 
in the life of this lady but on "A Modern Instance," "A 
Woman's Reason," " Indian Summer," and, best of them all, 
"The Rise of Silas Lapham." He was giving ground to 
Mr. Crothers's pale-gray pleasures as a reader in the time when, 
as he said : "I turned eagerly to some neutral tinted person 
who never had any adventure greater than missing the train to 
Dedham, and I . , . analyzed his character, and agitated myself 
in the attempt to get at his feelings, and I . . . verified his 
story by a careful reference to the railroad guide. I . . . treated 
that neutral tinted person as a problem, and I . . . noted all 
the delicate shades in the futility of his conduct. When, on 
any occasion that called for action, he did not know his own 
mind, I . . . admired him for his resemblance to so many 
people who do not know their own minds. After studying the 
problem until I came to the last chapter , . . I . . . suddenly 
gave it up, and agreed with the writer that it had no solutio'n." 
Had nothing occurred to break the sequence, he was on the 
way to wasting his energy, as Henry James did, " in describing 
human rarities, or cases that are common enough only in the 
abnormal groups of men and women living on the fringe of 
the great society of active, healthy human beings." 

The books of this period, in other words, were all the work 
of a well-schooled, unprejudiced observer whose ambition was 
to make transcripts of life. " Venetian Life " and " Italian 
Journeys " were the first logical expression of his desire and 
his capacities — books of the same sort as " Bracebridge Hall " 
and " Outre-Mer " and " Views Afoot " and " Our Old Home " 
(see p. 269, note). " A Foregone Conclusion " and " A Fearful 
Responsibility " simply cross the narrow bridge between exposi- 
tion and fiction but employ the same point of view and the 



41 8 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

same technique. Howells was interested in American character 
and in the nice distinctions between the different levels of 
culture. In " Silas Lapham," his greatest novel written be- 
fore 1890, the blunt Vermonter is set in contrast with certain 
Boston aristocrats. He amasses a fortune, becomes involved 
in speculation, in business injustice, and in ruin. But whatever 
Howells had to say then of social and economic forces, he 
said of powers as impersonal as gravitation. Business was 
business, and the man subjected to it was subjected to influences 
as capricious but as inevitable as the climate of New England. 

More and more as a realist he devoted himself to the 
presentation of character at the expense of plot. " The art of 
fiction," he wrote in his essay on Henry James in 1882, "has 
become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens or 
Thackeray. We could not suffer the confidential attitude 
of the latter now nor the mannerism of the former any more 
than we could endure the prolixity of Richardson or the coarse- 
ness of Fielding. These great men are of the past — they 
and their methods and interests ; even Trollope and Reade 
are not of the present." He dismissed moving accidents and 
dire catastrophes from the field of the new novel, substituting 
for fire and flood the slow smolder of individual resentment 
and a burst of feminine tears. With "April Hopes" of 1887 
he deliberately wrote an unfinished story, following two young 
and evidently incompatible people to the marriage altar, but 
leaving their subsequent sacrifice to the imagination of the 
reader, who must imagine his own sequel or go without. 

However, when he was past fifty he underwent a social 
conversion. And when he wrote his next book about his 
favorite characters, the Marches, he and they together risked 
" A Hazard of New Fortunes." He and they were no longer 
content to play at life under comfortable and protected circum- 
stances. They went down into the metropolis, competed with 
strange and uncouth people, and learned something about pov- 
erty and something about justice. In fact they learned what 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 419 

went into " Annie Kilburn " and " The Quality of Mercy " 
and "* The World of Chance " and " A Traveler from Altruria " 
and "The Eye of a Needle," learning it all through the new 
vision given by the belated reading of a great European. 
Writing from his heart of this conversion Mr. Howells says, 
in " My Literary Passions " : 

It is as if the best wine at this high feast, where I have sat so 
long, had been kept for the last and I need not deny a miracle in it 
in order to attest my skill in judging vintages. In fact I prefer 
to believe that my life has been full of miracles, and that the good 
has always come to me at the right time, so that I could profit most 
by it. I believe that if I had not turned the comer of my fiftieth year, 
when I first knew Tolstoy, I should not have been able to know him 
as fully as I did. He has been to me that final consciousness, which 
he speaks of so wisely in his essay on Life. I came in it to the 
knowledge of myself in ways I had not dreamt of before, and began 
at last to discern my relations to the race, without which we are noth- 
ing. The supreme art in literature had its highest effect in making me 
set art forever below humanity, and it is with the wish to offer the 
greatest homage to his heart and mind which any man can pay 
another, that I close this record with the name of Lyof Tolstoy. 

This passage we can hardly overvaluate. Taken by itself, 
it is merely a punctuation point in one author's autobiography, 
but seen against its background it records the epoch-marking 
fact that in the very years when America as one expression of 
itself was producing such native-born spokesmen as Whitman 
and Mark Twain and Joaquin Miller, it was also, in the spiritual 
successor to Longfellow and Lowell, making reverent acknowl- 
edgment, not to the splendors of an ancient civilization but 
to the newest iconoclasm in the Old World. It is not unworthy 
of comment that the influence of Tolstoy was exerted upon 
Howells after his removal to New York City, where he has 
been associated with the editorial staff of Harper's Magazine 
ever since 1881, and that the experiences of the Marches in 
their hazard of new fortunes is apparently autobiographical. 



420 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

There was no violent change in the material or method of 
his fiction-writing. It was simply enriched with a new purpose. 
To his old power to portray the individual in his mental and 
emotional processes he added a criticism of the role the indi- 
vidual played in society. He added a new consciousness of the 
institution of which the individual was always the creator, some- 
times the beneficiary, and all too often the victim. His maturity 
as a man and as a writer secured him in his human and artistic 
equilibrium, and in this degree has distinguished him from 
younger authors who have written with the same convictions 
and purposes. He has written no novels as extreme as Sinclair's 
" The Jungle," which ends with a diatribe on socialism, although 
he has been a socialist ; he has written nothing quite so in- 
sistent as Whitlock's " The Turn of the Balance," although he 
has been keenly aware of the difference between justice and the 
operation of the legal system. Every story has contained a 
recognition that life is infinitely complex, with a great deal of 
redeeming and a great deal of unintelligent and baffling good 
in it. Furthermore, he has written always out of his own 
experience and with all his old skill as a novelist, so that he 
has never done anything so clumsily commendable as Page's 
"John Marvel, Assistant" or anything so clearly prepared for 
by painstaking study as Churchill's " The Inside of the Cup." 

By 1894 Ho wells had come to the point where he wished 
to present his social thesis as a thesis, and he did so in "A 
Traveler from Altruria," which is not a novel at all but a series 
of conversations on the nature of American life as contrasted 
with life in an ideal state. Mr. Homos from Altruria (Mr. Man 
from Other Land) is the traveler who gets his first impressions 
of America by visiting a conservative novelist, Mr. Twelvemough, 
at a summer resort in which the hotel furnishes "a sort of 
microcosm of the American republic." Here, in addition to the 
host, are an enlightened banker, a complacent manufacturer, an 
intolerant professor of economics, a lawyer, a minister, and a 
society woman " who as a cultivated American woman . . . was 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 421 

necessarily quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, 
politically and historically " ; and here also are the hotel keeper, 
the baggage porter, a set of college-girl waitresses, and a sur- 
rounding population of " natives," a§ the summer resorter invid- 
iously describes the inhabitants whom he does n't quite dare to 
call peasants. In the earlier part of the essay the social cleav- 
ages are embarrassingly revealed, — the ignominy of being a 
manual laborer or, worse still, a domestic servant, and the con- 
sequent struggle to escape from toil and all the conditions that 
surround it. This leads quickly to a study of the economic 
situation in a republic where every man is for himself. 

When pinned by embarrassing questions the defenders of 
the American faith take refuge in what they regard as the static 
quality of human nature, but are further embarrassed by the 
Altrurian's innocent surprise at their tactics. He does not 
understand that it is in human nature for the first-come to be 
first served, or for every man to be for himself, or for a man 
"to squeeze his brother man when he gets him in his grip," or 
for employers to take it out of objecting employees in any way 
they can. To Mr. Twelvemough it is a matter of doubt as to 
whether the traveler is ironically astute or innocently simple in his 
implication that even human nature is subject to development. 

The latter two thirds of the book are a composite indictment 
of an economic system which permits slavery in everjrthing but 
name and which extols the rights of the individual only as they 
apply to the property holder. This culminates with the con- 
cluding lecture by the Altrurian — an " account of his own coun- 
try, which grew more and more incredible as he went on, and 
implied every insulting criticism of ours." The book concludes : 

We parted friends ; I even offered him some introductions ; but 
his acquaintance had become more and more difficult, and I was not 
sorry to part with him. That taste of his for low company was in- 
curable, and I was glad that I was not to be responsible any longer 
for whatever strange thing he might do next. I think he remained 
very popular with the classes he most affected ; a throng of natives, 



422 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

construction hands, and table-girls saw him off on his train; and he left 
large numbers of such admirers in our house and neighborhood, devout 
in the faith that there was such a commonwealth as Altruria, and that 
he was really an Altrurian. As for the more cultivated people who 
had met him, they continued of two minds upon both points. 

These are the convictions which dominate in all the later 
works. On the whole it is a significant fact that novels of so 
radical a thesis have attracted so little opposition. Never was 
an iconoclast received with such unintelligent tolerance. The 
suavity of his manner, the continued appearance of his books 
of travel and observation, the recurrence (as in "The Kentons") 
to his old type of work or the resort (as in the long unpublished 
"Leatherwood God") to fresh woods and pastures new, and 
all the while the humorous presentation of his favorite char- 
acters, particularly the bumptious young business man and the 
whimsically incoherent American woman, beguile his readers 
into a blind and bland assumption of Mr. Howells's harmless- 
ness. Possibly because they have been less skillful and more 
explicit, novel after novel from younger hands has excited criti- 
cism and the healthy opposition which prove that the truth has 
struck home. Perhaps his largest influence being indirectly 
exerted, his lack of sensationalism or sentimentalism debar him 
from the " best-seller " class ; but for fifty years he has been 
consistently followed by the best-reading class, and no novelist 
of the newer generation has been unconscious of his work. 

Henry James (1843-1916), whose work in some respects has 
been comparable to that of Howells, was a writer of so distinct 
an individuality that he has been the subject of much criticism 
and no little amiable controversy. Born in New York of lit- 
erary parentage, educated in the university towns of Europe, 
and resident most of his life abroad, he developed into an in- 
ternational novelist, chiefly interested in the various shades of 
the contrasting cultures in the Old World and the New. Of his 
subject matter one story is about as good an example as another, 
for James was remarkably consistent. The backgrounds are 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 423 

almost always intercontinental or transatlantic. The characters 
belong to the leisure class. The episodes, where they exist, are 
adventures of the mind. In the earlier stories, such as " The 
American" (1877), plot is more eventful and definitive and style 
is more lucid than in the later ones. In these James seemed 
to be so fascinated with his intricate discriminations of feeling 
that he confined himself largely to psychological analysis in a 
style which became increasingly obscured by subtle indirections. 
Thus." The Awkward Age " (1899) is a narrative in ten short 
" books " centering about the marriage and non-marriage of two 
London girls. Aggie, who has been brought up in the fashion 
of Richard Feverel translated into feminine terms, is married 
off to a wealthy and decent man twice her age, and after a 
short experience turns out to be altogether unfitted for his 
degree of sophistication. Nanda, wise from the beginning, fails 
to win the most attractive man of the lot, and in the end is 
adopted and carried off to the country by a charming old Vic- 
torian gentleman. Nothing objective happens. The tale is told 
in ten- long conversations, each entitled for one of the chief 
characters and occupying most of one of the books. All the 
characters talk with circuitous elusiveness, and all employ the 
same idiom, with the single exception of Aggie in her first two 
appearances, when she is supposed to be hopelessly ingenuous- 
In his attitude toward these people James put himself in a 
somewhat equivocal position. With their general social and 
spiritual insufficiency he had no patience. They represent the 
world of "Vanity Fair" and "The Newcomes " done down 
to date. But at the time he betrayed a lurking admiration for 
them, their ways, and their attitude toward life. Like the rest 
of his stories, " The Awkward Age " has little to do with the 
world of affairs in any group aspect. It is like a piece of Swiss 
carving on ivory. It has the same marvelous minuteness of 
detail, the same inutility, the same remote and attenuated 
relationship to any deep emotional experience or vigorous 
human endeavor. Unless one is devoted to the gospel of art 



424 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

for art's sake, one cannot appreciate the good of this sort of 
endeavor. In his narrowly Hmited field Mr. James is a master. 
For more than forty years and in more than thirty volumes he 
did the thing that he elected to without compromise in behalf 
of popularity. Yet admire him as much as they may, most 
readers turn from him with relief to the literature of activity 
and of the normal, healthy human beings who are seldom to 
be encountered in the pages of Henry James. 

Before mentioning in detail the types of American realistic 
novel which have followed on the work of Mr. Howells, some- 
thing should be said about the very considerable output of 
romantic fiction of which he has been strangely intolerant ; 
for it is strange that a man of his gentle generosity should be 
so insistent on the wrongness of an artistic point of view which 
is complementary to his own, though different from it. Dis- 
tinctions between romance and realism often lead into a dangerous 
" no man's land," and discussions of the term are harder to 
close than to begin. However, Sir Walter Raleigh's contention 
that the essence of romance lies in remoteness and the glamour 
of unf amiliarity — though not inclusive of all romance — will 
serve as an index for grouping here. 

In 1879, 1880, and 1882 three men, the first of whom is 
still producing, set out on long careers of popularity. They 
were George W. Cable (1844- ), Joel Chandler Harris 
(i 848-1908), and F.Marion Crawford (18 54-1909). Mr. Cable's 
contribution has been the interpretation of the elusive and fas- 
cinating character of the New Orleans Creole. Cable was bred 
in the river port when the old part of the city was less like the 
decaying heart of a mushroom than it is to-day. He grew up 
in an understanding of the courtly, high-spirited gentry of this 
exotic people, not studying either the people or their traditions 
for the sake of writing them up. He felt the beauty, but no 
less the futility, of their life. He was in no hurry to write for 
publication, but when he did so his fame was soon made. His 
subsequent departure from the South and his settling in New 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 425 

England seemed to many critics to be an abandonment of the 
richest field that life had to offer him. It was said for years, 
until it became one of the literary commonplaces, that Mr. Cable 
would never again rise to the level of " Old Creole Days " (1879), 
"The Grandissimes " (1880), or ''Madame Delphine " (1881). 
The fourteen volumes of the next third of a century seemed to 
fulfill this dreary prophecy. Yet all the time the South was the 
home of his imagination, and with 19 18 he gave the lie to all 
his Jeremiahs. The " Lovers of Louisiana " has quite as fine 
a touch as the works of nearly forty years ago. Mr, Cable 
sees the old charm in this life of an echoing past and the same 
fatuousness. At this distance into the twentieth century he 
leads his old characters and their children by new paths into 
the future, but he presents the graces of their obsolescent life 
in the familiar narrative style of his early successes — a style 
as fleeting yet as distinctive as the aroma of old lace. 

Joel Chandler Harris, like George W. Cable, did his work 
iry presenting the life of a vanishing race — the antebellum 
nfegro. He finished off his formal education, which ended when 
he was twelve, with the schooling of the printing shop, and 
passed from this into journalistic work with a succession of 
papers, of which the Atlanta Constitution is best known. Boy 
life on the plantation gave him his material in the folklore of 
the negro, and a chance bit of substituting gave him his very 
casual start as the creator of '" Uncle Remus." Northern readers 
were quick to recognize that Harris had given a habitation and 
a name to the narrative stuff that folklorists had already begun 
to collect and collate. The material goes back to the farthest 
sources of human tradition, but " Uncle Remus " was a new 
story-teller with a gift amounting to little short of genius. So 
his stories have the double charm of recording the lore of the 
negro and of revealing his humor, his transparent deceitful- 
ness, his love of parade, his superstition, his basic religious feel- 
ing, and his pathos. Harris seemed to draw his material from a 
bottomless spring. Starting with "' Uncle Remus : his Songs 



426 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and Sayings " in 1881, Harris produced six other volumes in 
the next ten years and brought the total to fourteen in folk 
stories alone before his death in 1908. As the aptest of criti- 
cisms on his own work, one of his admirers has well quoted 
Harris's comment on a book of Mark Twain : " It is history, 
it is romance, it is life. Here we behold a human character 
stripped of all tiresome details ; we see people growing and 
living ; we laugh at their humor, share their griefs, and, in the 
midst of it all, behold, we are taught the lesson of honesty, 
justice and mercy." 

The fluent romance of Marion Crawford is of a different and 
a lower order. He was a sort of professional cosmopolitan, — 
American by birth, educated largely abroad, widely traveled, 
and resident for most of his maturity on the Bay of Naples. 
He could turn off romances of Persia, of Constantinople, of 
Arabia, of medieval Venice, of Rome, and of England with about 
equal success. He had no great artistic purpose, admitting com- 
placently that he was not great enough to be a poet or clever 
enough to be a successful playwright. He had no ethical pur- 
pose. He had not even a high ideal of craftsmanship, putting 
out eight volumes in 1903 and 1904 alone. He deserves men- 
tion as a prolific and self-respecting entertainer who converted 
his knowledge of the world into a salable commodity and 
established a large market for his superficial romances. 

With the turn of the century — almost two decades after the 
d6buts of Cable, Harris, and Crawford — a new interest began 
to spread from the collegians to the reading public as a whole, 
the same influences which were producing as leaders in 
the scholastic field Von Hoist, Channing, McMaster, Hart, 
Jameson, and McLaughlin — masters of American history — 
extending to the people at large. In 1897 appeared Weir 
Mitchell's "Hugh Wynne." In the spring of 1898 came the 
war with Spain. In 1899 Ford's "Janice Meredith" and 
Churchill's " Richard Carvel " were published ; in 1900, Mary 
Johnston's " To Have and to Hold " ; and in 1901 Churchill's 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 427 

" The Crisis " — four novels which by the end of the latter year 
had reached a combined sale of 1,200,000 copies. For a little 
while the vogue of the historical romance passed all recent 
precedent. The natural zest for stories of olden days was 
reenforced by the revival of national feeling, and the popular 
authors of the moment reaped a golden harvest from the public, 
whom they at once charmed and instructed. 

In the meanwhile, however, the describers and critics of 
contemporary American life were by no means on the wane. 
In the shifting currents of fiction various types of realism have 
come to the surface and are conspicuous in the tide. They all 
fall under the definition formulated by Mr. Perry : the sort of 
fiction that " does not shrink from the commonplace or from 
the unpleasant in its effort to depict things as they are and 
life as it is " ; but within this definition they may be separated 
into two main classes. The first is the type that begins and 
ends with portrayal of human life, deals with the individual, 
and aims only to please. The second is written with the intent 
of pronouncing a criticism on the ways of men as they live to- 
gether, presents its characters against a social and institutional 
background, and aims to influence the opinions of its readers. 
The difference between the two is, of course, the difference 
between the earlier and the later novels of Mr. Howells. In 
his later studies Mr. Howells is always dealing unaggressively 
but searchingly with the problem of economic justice, but this is 
only one of three broad fields. All modern problem and purpose 
novels are devoted, simply or complexly, to the market — 
property; the altar — religion ; and the hearthstone — domestic 
life. This classification, which is useful only as long as it is em- 
ployed cautiously for a general guide, leads to a cross-survey of 
recent fiction by kinds rather than by individual authors. 

The number of more or less successful portrayers of provin- 
cial types in American fiction defies even enumeration. The 
niost effective have, however, been unsatisfied with depicting 
the mere idiosyncrasies of a region heavily propped by dialect 



428 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and have gone on to the interpretation of Hfe as it might 
express itself anywhere under similar conditions. Thus the 
"Old Chester" of Mrs. Margaret Deland (1857- ) is a 
study of isolated conservatisms thrown into relief by the wise 
sanity of Dr. Lavendar. Old Chester, we are told, is in Penn- 
sylvania. It might be in any state or country where narrow 
respectability could intrench itself. It is an American Cran- 
ford. In the ''Old Chester Tales" (1898) "The Promises 
of Dorothea " involve her utterly respectable elopement with 
Mr. King, whose worst offense in the eyes of her guardian 
maiden aunts is that he has lived abroad for many years. The 
implied departure from Old Chester customs is sufficient con- 
demnation. "Good for the Soul" culminates with the doctor's 
sensible advice to Elizabeth Day, who, at the end of twelve 
years of happy marriage, is oppressed by the memory of a 
Bohemian girlhood of which her husband is ignorant. " Sup- 
pose," said the doctor, "I hadn't found her a good woman, 
should I have told her to hold her tongue ? " " The Child's 
Mother " is the story of an unregenerate whose baby Dr. Lav- 
endar keeps away from her by a process we should call black- 
mail if it were not practiced by a saint. Wide and varied as 
her output is, Mrs. Deland has nowhere shown her artistry 
more finely than in the two Dr. Lavendar volumes. 

The comments of Edith Wharton (1862- ) on Ameri- 
can life are from the cosmopolitan point of view and present a 
series of pictures of the American woman which for harshness 
of uncharity are difficult to parallel. As a matter of fact Amer- 
ica is so vast and varied that there is .no national type of woman. 
Mrs. Wharton's women are representative of one stratum just 
as Christy's pictorial girls are. They are the product of indul- 
gence which makes them hard, capricious, and completely 
selfish. Lily Bart of "The House of Mirth" (1905) begins 
high in the social scale, compromises reluctantly with moneyed 
ambition, and in one instance after another defeats herself by 
delay and equivocation in a declining series of "affairs." More 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 429 

approachable than irreproachable, she suffers from the social 
beclouding of her reputation and, in the end, as a consequence 
of her low standards but her lack of shamelessness she suc- 
cumbs to the circumstances that created her and arrives at a 
miserable death. Undine Spragg, in " The Custom of the 
Country" (191 3), first married and divorced in a Western 
town is then brought to New York, introduced into society 
and "' made " by her good looks and her brazen ambition. She 
wrecks the life of her second husband, a refined gentleman, 
and then as a result of much foreign residence marries a 
Frenchman of family. From him she runs away, finally to re- 
marry Moffatt, who, throughout the story, has been her familiar 
spirit, subtly revealing his intimacy of feeling, and increasing 
his hold upon her as he rises in the money world. The title 
gives the cue to the story as a whole and to its several parts. 
By nature Undine is coarse-grained, showy, and selfish ; by 
upbringing she becomes incorrigible. Her first and last husband 
is one of her own kind — sufficiently so that he is capable of 
resuming with her after her streaky, intermediate career. The 
second is broken on her overweening selfishness ; the third, by 
virtue of his ancient family tradition, is able to save himself 
though not to mold or modify her. At the end, with Moffatt 
and all his immense wealth, she is still confronted by " the 
custom of the country." Because of her divorces " she could 
never be an ambassador's wife ; and as she advanced to wel- 
come her first guest she said to herself that it was the one part 
she was really made for." This is the Wharton formula : none 
of her women really triumphs. Lily Bart's downfall is one with 
her death. She had breathed the stifling atmosphere from her 
city childhood; what seemed to save Undine was the initial 
vigor of her Western youth, but even she could not successfully 
defy the ways of the world. 

Hamlin Garland (1860-/11^^; ) in 1891 achieved with his 
" Main-Traveled Roads " as quickly earned a reputation as 
Cable and Harris had done with their first volumes. The son 



430 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of a sturdy Western pioneer, he had passed a boyhood of in- 
cessant toil before breaking away to earn his own schooling, 
which culminated with several years of self-directed study in 
Boston. A vacation return in 1887 to Wisconsin, Dakota, and 
Iowa revealed to him the story-stuff of his early life, and during 
the next two years he wrote the realistic studies which won 
him his first recognition. In them, he explained later, he tried 
to embody the stern truth. " Though conditions have changed 
somewhat since that time, yet for the hired man and the renter 
farm life in the West is still a stern round of drudgery. My 
pages present it — not as the summer boarder or the young 
lady novelist sees it — but as the working farmer endures it." 
To the reader of Mr. Garland's work as a whole it is evident 
that the richest part of his life was over with the writing of 
this book and "A Spoil of Office" (1892) and "Rose of 
Butcher's Coolly" (1895). With the adoption of city life his 
interests became diffuse and miscellaneous, as his writing did 
also. The almost startling strength of "A Son of the Middle 
Border" (19 18) reenforces this conviction, for this late piece 
of autobiography is the story of the author's first thirty-three 
years and owes its fine power to the fact that in composing 
it Mr. Garland renewed his youth like the eagle's. What 
he propounded in his booklet of essays, " Crumbling Idols " 
(1894), he illustrated in his stories up to that time. In them 
he made his best contribution to American literature, except 
for this recent reminiscent volume. In almost every quarter 
of the country similar expositions of American life were multi- 
plied and to such an extent that Mrs. Deland, Mrs. Wharton, 
and Mr. Garland are chosen simply as illustrations of an 
output which would require volumes for full treatment. 

In the field of realism which is concerned with a criticism of 
institutional life, Mrs. Deland wrote a memorable book in "John 
Ward, Preacher" (1888). This was the same year in which 
Mrs. Humphry Ward's " Robert Elsmere " appeared. Both 
were indexes • to the religious unrest of the whole Victorian' 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 43 1 

period, — an unrest apparent in America since the rise of the 
Unitarians and the activities of the Transcendentalists, and 
recorded in such novels as Mrs. Stowe's " Oldtown Folks " 
and Bayard Taylor's " Hannah Thurston," as well as in the 
underlying currents of Holmes's Breakfast-Table series. The 
explicit story of John Ward is the tragic history of his love 
and marriage with Helen Jaffrey. The implicit story is based 
on the insufficiency of religious dogma detached from life. 
Mrs. Deland's convictions resulted later in the genuine strength 
of her best single character, Dr. Lavendar, and in the sub- 
ordinate religious motif of "The Iron Woman" (19 10) (see 
p. 307). In recent years the narrative treatment of the problem 
to attract widest attention has been Churchill's " The Inside 
of the Cup" (191 3), a story which one is tempted to believe 
gained its reading more from its author's reputation and the 
prevailing interest in the problem than from its artistic excel- 
lence. Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. Ward wrote out of long experi- 
ence in life ; Mr. Churchill seems rather to have felt the need 
of introducing this theme into his many-volumed exposition of 
America and to have read up on the literature of the subject 
with the same thoroughness that characterized his preparation 
for more strictly historical stories. 

The novels of economic life are far more numerous and 
more urgent in tone. One of the earliest was John Hay's 
"The Breadwinners" (1883). It is significant that this ap- 
peared anonymously, the talented poet and politician preferring 
not to be known as a story-teller. The labor unrest of the 
early Bo's disturbed him. Desire for education seemed to re- 
sult unfortunately, and with a very clear impatience Mr. Hay 
expounded the hardships of wealth in the midst of a labor up- 
rising. To go to the root of the difficulty did not seem to occur 
to him. Shortly after this early industrial novel Mr. Howells 
was to attack the problem in a broader and deeper way (see 
pp. 418-421). And while Howells was still making his suc- 
cessive approaches a whole succession of younger men joined 



432 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the assault. With many of them there was no such vital experi- 
ence as their senior had passed through ; they were rather writ- 
ing as journalists and utilizing the novel, sometimes clumsily 
and often feverishly. Few have done work which could at all 
compare with that of Frank Norris (i 870-1902). His inter- 
rupted trilogy — an epic of the wheat — fulfilled the promise of 
his early efforts, "Vendover and the Brute" and "McTeague," 
and made his early death the occasion of a deep loss. Of these 
three novels "The Octopus " (1901) forms the story of a crop 
of wheat and deals with the war between the wheat-grower and 
the railroad trust; the second, "The Pit" (1903), is a story 
of the middleman ; the third, " The Wolf " (never written), was 
to have dealt with the consumption in Europe. Norris's aspira- 
tion was no less than that of his own character Presley, the 
poet. " He strove for the diapason, the great song which should 
embrace in itself a whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of 
an entire people. ..." With a great imaginative grasp he 
conceived of the wheat as an enormous, primitive force. 

The Wheat that had killed Cressler, that had ingulfed Jadwin's 
fortune and all but unseated reason itself ; the Wheat that had inter- 
vened like a great torrent to drag her husband from her side and 
drown him in the roaring vortices of the Pit, had passed on, resist- 
less, along its ordered and predetermined courses from West to 
East, like a vast Titanic flood, had passed, leaving Death and Ruin 
'in its wake, but bearing Life and Prosperity to the crowded cities 
and centres of Europe. 

The number and the temper of stories written without Norris's 
breadth of vision or skill brought down on many of their authors 
the epithet of " muck-raker " in common with the sensational 
writers of magazine exposures. Among the saner and, conse- 
quently, more effective purpose novels the writings of Winston 
Churchill and Brand Whitlock have helped to offset the shrill 
cries of Upton Sinclair and Jack London. 

The American novels which center about sex and the family 
have passed through rapid changes during the twentieth century. 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 433 

In 1902 Mr. Bliss Perry, discussing tendencies of American 
novelists in his "A Study of Prose Fiction," declared that the 
American novel was free from equivocal morality, that " people 
who want the sex-novel, and want it prepared with any literary 
skill, have to import it from across the water," and concluded 
with the confident assertion that while American fiction " may 
not be national, and may not be great, it will have at least the 
negative virtue of being clean." A few pages later in the same 
chapter he made an observing comment of which he failed to 
see the implication when he noted that conversation between 
writers of fiction was likely to center about men like Turgenieff, 
and Tolstoi, Flaubert and Daudet, Bjornson and D'Annunzio. 
The influence of these men was soon to be felt, both directly 
and through the medium of Englishmen from the generation 
of Hardy to that of Wells and Galsworthy. And within a dozen 
years it had extended so far that the National Institute of Arts 
and Letters went on record in warning and protest against the 
morbid insistency of an increasing number of younger writers. 
This wave was a symptom not only of a literary influence but, 
more deeply, of the world-wide attempt to re-estimate the rights 
and duties and privileges of womankind. There are few sub- 
jects on which people of recent years have done more thinking, 
and few on which they have arrived at less certain conclusions. 
With the collapse of the great " conspiracy of silence " that 
has surrounded certain aspects of personal and family life, it has 
been natural for the present generation to fall into the same 
errors into which Whitman had fallen. Naturally, too, the evil 
thinker seized on the occasion for evil speech. There has been 
every shade of expression from blatant wantonness to high- 
minded and self-respecting honesty. Thus we can account for 
Mr. Theodore Dreiser, who seems to feel that freedom of 
speech should be gratefully acknowledged by indulgence to the 
farthest extreme. And thus we can account for Mr. Ernest 
Poole, who, in "His Family," has presented an extraordinarily 
fine summary of the broad and perplexing theme. 



434 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The English novel is nearing the end of its second century 
of influence. It is a constant in literature which will probably 
attract more readers than any other single form. Yet it will 
have its times of greater and lesser popularity, and it seems to 
have passed the height of a wave shortly after 1900. First the 
drama came forward with a new challenge to serious attention, 
and of late poetry has reestablished itself as a living language. 



BOOK LIST 
General References 

Besant, Sir Walter. The Art of Fiction. 1 884. 
Burton, Richard. Forces in Fiction. 1902. 
Crawford, F. Marion. The Novel: what it is. 1903. 
Cross, W. L. The Development of the English Novel. 1 899. 
FiSKE, H. S. Provincial Types in American Fiction. 1903. 
Garland, Hamlin. Crumbling Idols. 1894. 
HowELLS, W. D. Criticism and Fiction. 1895. 
HowELLS, W. D. Heroines of Fiction. 1901. 
James, Henry. The Art of Fiction, in Partial Portraits. 
James, Henry. The New Novel, in Notes on Novelists. 1914. 
Lanier, Sidney. The English Novel. 1883. 
Matthews, Brander. Aspects of Fiction. 1 896. 
Matthews, Brander. The Historical Novel and Other Essays. 1901. 
Norris, Frank. The Responsibilities of the Novelist. 1901. 
Pattee, F. L. American Literature since 1870, chaps, xi, xii, xvii.i 191 6. 
Perry, Bliss. A Study of Prose Fiction, chap. xiii. 1902. 
Phelps, W. L. Essays on Modern Novelists. (Howells, Mark Twain.) 
1910. 

Individual Works 

The field is so extensive that no lists of works by the authors men- 
tioned are included here. The novels selected for reading can be taken 
from the specific references in the text. All the works are in print and 
easily available. 

Magazine Articles 

The magazine articles on fiction are extremely numerous. From among 
those since 1900 the following are of special interest : 

1900-1904. New Element in Modern Fiction. N. Boyce. Bookman, Vol. 
XIII, p. 149. April, 1901. 
Novel and the Short Story. G. Atherton. Bookman, Vol. XVII, 
PP- 36-37- March, 1903. 



THE RISE OF FICTION — HOWELLS 435 

Novel and the Theater. Nation, Vol. LXXII, pp. 210-21 1. 

March 14, 1901. 
1905-1909. Confessions of a Best-Seller. Atlantic, Vol. CIV, pp. 577-585. 

November, 1909. 
Convention of Romance. Bookman, Vol. XXVI, pp. 266-267 

November, 1907. 
Humor and the Heroine. Atlantic, Vol. XCV, pp. 852-854 

June, 1905. 
Mob Spirit in Literature. H. D. Sedgwick. Atlantic, Vol. XCVI^ 

pp. 9-1 5. July, 1905. 
Purpose Novel. F. T. Cooper. Bookman, Vol. XXII, pp. 131- 

132. October, 1905. 
1910-1914. American and English Novelists. Nation,No\. XCVIII, pp. 422- 

423. April 16, 19 1 4. 
American backgrounds for fiction : 

Georgia. W. N. Harben. ^o^i»z««. Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 186- 
192. October, 1913. 

North CaroUna. T. Dixon. Bookman, Vol. XXXVIII, 
pp. 51 1-5 14. January, 1914. 

Tennessee. M. T. Daviess. Bookman, Vol. XXXVIII, 
PP- 394-399- December, 191 3. 

North Country of New York. I. Bacheller. Bookman, 
Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 624-628. February, 1914. 

Pennsylvania Dutch. H. R. Martin. Bookvian, Vol. 
XXXVIII, pp. 244-247. November, 1913. 
American Novel in England. G. Atherton. Bookman, Vol. 

XXX, pp. 633-640. February, 1910. 
Recent Reflections of a Novel-Reader. Atlantic. Vol. CXII, 

pp. 689-701. November, 1913. Vol. CXIII, pp. 490-500. 

April, 1914. 
Big Movements in Fiction. F. T. Cooper. Bookman, Vol. 

XXXIII, pp. 80-82. March, 191 1. 
Characters in Recent Fiction. M. Sherwood. Atlantic, Vol. 

CIX, pp. 672-684. May, 1912. 
Fault- Findings of a Novel-Reader. Atlantic, Vol. CV, pp. 14- 

23. January, 1910. 
Morality in Fiction and Some Recent Novels. F. T. Cooper. 

Bookman, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 666-672. February, 1914. 
Newest Woman. K. F. Gerould. Atlantic, Vol. CIX, pp. 606- 

611. May, igi2. 
Relation of the Novel to the Present Social Unrest. Bookman, 

Vol. XL, pp. 276-303. November, 1914. 
Art in Fiction. E. Phillpotts. Bookman, Vol. XXXI, pp. 17- 

18. March, 1910. 
1915. American Style in American Fiction. F. F. Kelly. Bookman, 

Vol. XLI, pp. 299-302. May, 191 5. 
Free Fiction. H. S. Canby. Atlantic, Vol. CXVI, pp. 60-68. 

June, 191 5. 



436 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Advance of the English Novel. W. L. Phelps. Bookman., Vol. 

XLII, pp. 128-134, 381-388, 389-396. October-December, 

1915. 
Literary Merchandise. G. Atherton. New Republic, Vol. Ill, 

pp. 223-224. July 3, 191 5. 

1916. New York of the Novelists : a New Pilgrimage. A.B.Maurice, 

Bookman, Vol. XLII, pp. 20-41, 165-192, 301-315, 436-452, 
569-589, 696-713. September, 1915-February, 1916. 

Realism and Recent American Fiction. H. W. Boynton. Nation, 
Vol. CII, pp. 380-382. April 6, 1916. 

Russian View of American Literature. A. Yarmolinsky. Book- 
man, Vol. XLIV, pp. 44-48. September, 1916. 

Recent Reflections of a Novel- Reader. Atlantic, Vol. CXVII, 
pp. 632-642. May, 1916. 

Sex in Fiction. Nation, Vol. CI, p. 716. Dec. 16, 1915. 

Woman's Mastery of the Story. G. M. Stratton. Atlantic, Vol. 
CXVII, pp. 668-676. May, 1916. 

191 7. Analysis of Fiction in the United States, 1911-1916. F. E. 

Woodward. Bookman, Vol. XLV, pp. 187-191. April, 1917. 
Apotheosis of the Worker in Modern Fiction. L. M. Field. 

Bookman, Vol. XLV, pp. 89-92. March, 1917. 
New Orthodoxy in Fiction. L. M. Field. Bookman, Vol. XLV, 

pp. 175-178. April, 1917. 
Outstanding Novels of the Year. H. W. Boynton. Nation, 

Vol. CV, pp. 599-601. Nov. 29, 1917. 
Sixteen Years of Fiction. A. B. Maurice. Bookmatt, Vol. XLIV, 

pp. 484-492. January, 1917. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 

From 1865 to 1900 the American drama occupied a place 
of so little artistic importance in American life that the liter- 
ary historians have ignored it. There is no word about it in 
the substantial volumes by Richardson and Wendell, none in 
the ordinary run of textbooks, not a mention of playwright, 
producer, actor, or stage even in the four-hundred-odd pages 
of Pattee's "American Literature since 1870." This silence 
cannot, of course, be accounted for by any conspiracy among 
the historians ; it must be acknowledged that in itself the 
period had almost no dramatic significance. Quinn's collec- 
tion of twenty-five " Representative American Plays " includes 
only three produced between these dates. The basic reason 
for this is that literary conditions did not induce or encourage 
play-writing in the English-speaking world on either side of 
the Atlantic. The greatest artistry was expressing itself in 
poetry, and in America no major poet but Longfellow 
attempted even " closet drama." The greatest genius in story- 
telling was let loose in the channel of fiction, and many of 
the successful novels were given a second incarnation in play 
form. The names that stand out in stage history in these 
years are the names of controlling managers, like Lester 
Wallack and Augustin Daly, or of players, like Charlotte 
Cushman, Booth, Barrett, Jefferson, and Mansfield ; and the 
writers of plays — encouraged by stage demands rather than 
by literary conditions — were the theatrical successors of Dun- 
lap and Payne (see pp. 94-96) — men like Dion Boucicault 
(1822.?-! 890) with his hundred and twenty-four plays, and 
Bronson Howard (i 842-1908) with his less numerous but no 

437 



438 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

more distinguished array of stage successes. Side by side with 
these, and quite on a level with them, rose one eminent critic 
of stagecraft and the drama, William Winter (1836-19 17). 

With the last decade of the nineteenth century, however, 
a new generation of playwrights began to win recognition — 
men who knew literature in its relation to the other arts and 
who wrote plays out of the fullness of their experience and 
the depth of their convictions, hoping to reach the public 
with their plays but not concerned chiefly with immediate 
" box-office " returns. The movement started in England and 
on the Continent and — as we can now see — in America as 
well, but the traditional American neglect of American litera- 
ture 1 led the first alert critics on this side the Atlantic to lay 
all their emphasis on writers of other nationalities. Thus in 
1905 James Huneker's " Iconoclasts " discussed Norwegian, 
French, German, Russian, Italian, Belgian, and English dram- 
atists. E. E. Hale's "Dramatists of To-day" of the same year 
dealt with four from Huneker's list, substituted one French- 
man, and added two Englishmen. This selection was quite 
defensible, for the significant contemporary plays which 
reached the stage came from these sources. But by 19 10 the 
drift of things was suggested by the contents of Walter Prit- 
chard Eaton's "At the New Theatre and Others." In this 
book, of twenty-three plays reviewed, ten were by American 
authors, and in the third section, composed of essays related 
to the theater, two of the chief units were discussions of 
Clyde Fitch and William Winter. And the dedication of 
Eaton's book is perhaps the single item of greatest historical 
significance, for it gives due credit to Professor George P. 
Baker of Harvard as " Founder in that institution of a pioneer 
course for the study of dramatic composition " and as " inspir- 
ing leader in the movement for a better appreciation among 
educated men of the art of the practical theater." 

1 See "American Neglect of American Literature" by Percy H. Boynton. 
Nation (1916), Vol. CI I, pp. 478-480. 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 439 

The field into which we are led is so broad and so near 
that in a brief excursion we can undertake only a rough clas- 
sification of the main products and the soil in which they are 
growing. Such a classification may be found if we consider 
in turn first the better play written for a better theater, which 
began to appear about 1890, then the various new types of 
theater which grew from the people's interest instead of from 
managerial enterprise, and, finally, the literary drama in poetry 
or prose which profits from the cooperation of actor and 
stage-manager, but can survive in print unaided. 

" The movement for a better appreciation among educated 
m^i of the art of the practical theatre," although led by one 
college professor, was itself a symptom of fresh developments 
in the art to which he addressed himself. Omitting — but not 
ignoring — the rise of the modern school of European drama- 
tists in the 1890's, we must be content for the moment to 
note that this decade brought into view in America several 
men who were more than show-makers, even though they were 
honestly occupied in making plays that the public would care 
to spend their money for. The significant facts about these 
playwrights are that they gave over the imitation and adapta- 
tion of French plays, returned to American dramatic material, 
and achieved results that are readable as well as actable. Their 
immediate forerunners were Steele MacKaye (1842- 1894) and 
James A. Heme (i 840-1901) — the former devotedly active as 
a teacher of budding players and as a student of stage tech- 
nique, the latter the quiet realist of " Shore Acres " and other 
less-known plays of simple American life. Coming into their first 
prominence at this time were Augustus Thomas (1859- 
and Clyde Fitch (i 865-1909). 

They both appeared as theatrical craftsmen of the new 
generation, and like their prototypes in America, Dunlap and 
Payne (see pp. 96-98), they wrote abundantly, for audiences 
rather than for readers, and with definite actors and actresses 
in mind as they devised situations and composed lines. Clyde 



440 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Fitch in twenty years wrote and produced on the stage thirty- 
three plays and adapted and staged twenty-three more — an 
immense output. In the first ten years the most important 
were all built on historical themes : " Beau Brummel," " Nathan 
Hale," and " Barbara Frietchie." It is easy to see and to say 
that in writing these he was carrying on the tradition of 
Bronson Howard with his Civil War melodramas, — a half 
truth, however, since " Beau Brummel " in no way fits the 
generalization, and other plays of the decade were on contem- 
porary social life. In the second ten years the keynote was 
struck with " The Climbers," a social satire on a shallow city 
woman and her two daughters whose social ambition deadens 
them to any fine impulses or natural emotions. In the long 
roster of Fitch's successes a few constant traits are obvious. 
He built his stories well, set them carefully, combined the 
resources of the playwright who knows how to devise a " situ- 
ation " with those of the stage-manager who knows how to 
present it, and cast his stories into simple, rapid-fire, clever 
dialogue. He took advantage of up-to-date material for the 
superficial dress of his plays, introducing the background of 
latest allusion, recently coined turns of phrase, the newest 
songs, the quips and turns of fashion. And he went beneath 
the surface to the undercurrents of human motive as in the 
wifely constancy in " The Stubbornness of Geraldine," the 
jealousy of "The Girl with the Green Eyes," and the weak 
mendacity of Becky in "The Truth." Fitch was never pro- 
found, never sought to be ; but he was deservedly popular, 
for he combined no little skill with an alert sense of human 
values in everyday life, and he brought an artistic conscience 
to his work. Because he was so successful his influence on 
other dramatists has been far-reaching; and those who have 
been neither too small nor too great to learn from him have 
learned no little on how to write a play. 

Mr. Augustus Thomas has lived in the atmosphere of the 
theater from boyhood. He began writing plays at fourteen. 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 441 

was directing an amateur company at seventeen, and had his 
first New York success in his twenty-eighth year. Since 1887 
he has been a professional playwright ; he has nearly fifty 
productions to his credit, and he is now art director of the 
Charles Frohman interests. His first widely known works were 
the plays of states: "Alabama" (1891), "In Mizzoura " 
(1893), and "Arizona" (1899) — plays which exerted the same 
general appeal as " Shenandoah " and " Barbara Frietchie." 
As a practical man of the theater he adapted and worked 
over material, dramatizing novels of Mrs. Burnett, Hopkinson 
Smith, and Townsend, His attractive " Oliver Goldsmith " 
was built not only around the character of that whimsical man 
of letters but included as its own best portion an act out of 
the hero's play "The Good-Natured Man." With the kind 
of adaptability which belongs equally to the practical man of 
the theater and to the enterprising journalist, he undertook in 
time the t3q3e of play that deals with questions or problems 
of modern interest. The same current of speculation that led 
Mark Twain to write his essay on " Mental Telepathy " and 
Hamlin Garland his book on " The Shadow World " accounts 
for Thomas's "The Witching Hour" (1907), which inter- 
weaves the strands of hereditary influence and mental sugges- 
tion ; and he contributed his word on the complex problems 
of the modern family in "As a Man Thinks " (191 1). Up to 
191 7 he had written and adapted forty-six plays, of which 
eleven had been published after their production, but his 
work of real distinction belongs to the period opening with 
"The Witching Hour." In his later plays he has coupled 
his highly developed ability to tell a story with a vital feeling 
for the positive values in life. In "The Harvest Moon" he 
makes a playwright-character say, " I would willingly give the 
rest of my life to go back and take from my plays every word 
that has made men less happy, less hopeful, less kind." And 
in " The Witching Hour " he declares through Jack Brook- 
field the text of that and succeeding plays, " You 're a child 



442 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

of the everlasting God and nothing on the earth or under it 
can harm you in the shghtest degree " — a text which, said of 
the soul, is immortally true. 

In a short chapter it is impossible to discuss in detail any 
other of the play-writers who have done with less applause 
but with no less devotion the kind of writing represented by 
the best of Fitch and Thomas ; and it would be invidious to 
attempt a mere list of the others, as if a mention of their 
names would be a sop to their pride. The case must rest 
here with the statement that these two men were the leaders 
of an increasing group and that the desire to compose more 
skillful and more worthy plays was paralleled by a revival of 
respect for the modern drama and the modern stage. This 
leads to the middle section of our survey, and turns from the 
drama itself to the fifteen-year struggle for possession of the 
American stage — the actual "boards" on which the plays 
could be presented. It is as dramatic as any play, this story 
of the conflict between intelligent idealism, — whether in play- 
wright, actor or theatergoer, and commercial greed, — and it is 
far from concluded, though a happy denouement seems to be 
in sight. 

The first step has already been mentioned : the develop- 
ment of a student attitude toward the contemporary play and 
its production. Professpr Baker at Harvard and Professor 
Matthews at Columbia were looked at by some with wonder 
and by others with amused doubt when they began as teachers 
to divide their attention between the ancient and the modem 
stage. Yet as the study progressed their students became not 
only intelligent theatergoers but constructive contributors, as 
critics and creators, to the literature of the stage ; and then 
in the natural order of events the whole student body came to 
realize that the older drama should be reduced to its proper 
place and restored to it ; that it was an interesting chapter in 
literary and social history because it was not a closed chapter, 
but a preliminary to the events of the present. At the same 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 443 

time modest but important beginnings were being made in 
the education of the actor, and men hke Frankhn Sargent, 
President of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, opened 
the way to a professional training for actors that would com- 
pare with the training demanded of and by the singer, painter, 
or sculptor. These beginnings were full of promise, but the 
promise was to be long held in abeyance by the machinations 
of the theatrical syndicate. 

This commercial trust is the heavy villain of the play, the 
charge against it being that whereas the business management 
of the theater was called into being in order to serve the 
drama, it managed so effectively that by the winter of 1895- 
1896 it was strong enough to demand that henceforth the 
drama support the business management. The six men who 
were able to assume control handled their business according to 
the approved methods of the trust, trying to get salable goods 
and to multiply the output of what the public wanted, trying 
to control all the salesmen (players) and all the distributing 
points (playhouses) and to put out of business any player or 
local manager who would not market their choice of goods at 
their schedule of dates and prices. For nearly fifteen years 
the syndicate were as effective in their field as the Standard 
Oil or United Shoe Machinery Companies were in theirs. 
One actress, Mrs. Fiske, endured every sort of discomfort 
and, no doubt, heavy losses for the privilege of playing what, 
when, and where she pleased ; but for a while she had her 
own way only to the extent of appearing in theaters so cheap 
that they were beneath the contempt of the monopoly. In the 
meanwhile, however, discontent spread, a rival firm of mana- 
gers erected rival theaters, and, conducting their business on 
principles of more enlightened selfishness, in 19 10 enlisted 
twelve hundred of the smaller revolting theaters with them 
and forced the syndicate to share the field. Since that time 
the theaters of America have been administered as well, per- 
haps, as the system will allow ; but it is a mistaken system 



444 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

that puts a fine art in the market place and demands that it 
maintain itself because " business is business." 

The first really great attempt to ask anything less of the 
modern drama in America, to demand no more of the play 
than is demanded of the opera or the symphony, was the 
founding of the celebrated and short-lived New Theater in 
New York (i 909-191 1), That it failed within two years is not 
half so important as that it was founded, that others on smaller 
scales have since been founded and have failed, that municipal 
theaters have sprung up here and there and are being sup- 
ported according to various plans, that scores upon scores of 
little theaters, neighborhood playhouses, and people's country 
theaters have been founded, that producers like Winthrop Ames 
and Stuart Walker are established in public favor, that the 
Drama League of America is a genuine national organization, 
and that the printing of plays for a reading public is many fold 
its proportions of twenty years ago. The Napoleonic theatrical 
managers are still in the saddle in America, and the com- 
mercial stage of the country is still managed from Broadway, 
but the uncommercial stage is coming to be more considerable 
every season. The leaven of popular intelligence is at work. 

With developments of this sort taking place and gaining in 
momentum, there is a growing attention to the printed literary 
drama and an encouraging prospect for it in the theater. As 
far back as 1891, when Clyde Fitch and Augustus Thomas 
were coming into their reputations, Richard Hovey (1864- 
1900) published "The Quest of Merlin," the first unit in his 
" Launcelot and Guenevere," which he described as a poem in 
dramas. It was a splendidly conceived treatment of the con- 
flict between the, claims of individual love and the intruding 
demands of the outer world. In resorting to the Arthurian 
legends Hovey "was not primarily interested in them," accord- 
ing to his friend and expounder, Bliss Carman, " fbr their 
historic and picturesque value as poetic material, great as that 
value undoubtedly is . . . the problem he felt called upon to 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 445 

deal with is a perennial one, old as the world, yet intensely 
modern, and it appealed to him as a modern man. . . . The 
Arthurian cycle provided Tennyson with the groundwork of a 
national epic ; ... to Richard Hovey it afforded a modern 
instance stripped of modern dress." It was to have been com- 
pleted in three parts, each containing a masque, a tragedy, and 
a romantic drama ; but only the first was completed — " The 
Quest of Merlin " (1891), " The Marriage of Guenevere " (iSqi)- 
and "The Birth of Galahad" (1898). Shortly after finishing 
" Taliesin," the masque for the second part, Hovey died. 

Another and greater cycle of poetic dramas which was 
interrupted by a premature death was a trilogy on the 
Promethean theme by William Vaughn Moody (1869-19 10). 
The theme is the unity of God and man and their consequent 
mutual dependency. "The Fire-Bringer " (1904) presents 
man's victory at the supreme cost of disunion from God 
through the defiant theft of fire from heaven. " The Masque 
of Judgment" (1900) is a no less fearful triumph of the 
Creator in dooming part of himself as he overwhelms rnan- 
kind. The final part, "The Death of Eve," was to have 
achieved the final reconciliation, but it was left a fragment at 
the poet's death in 19 10 and so stands in the posthumous 
edition of his works. It is significant in the literary history 
of the day that the culminating product of both these young 
poets was an uncompleted poetic play-cycle. Moody's connec- 
tion with the stage, however, was closer than Hovey 's, for he 
wrote two prose plays which were successfully produced' — "The 
Great Divide" (1907) and "The Faith Healer" (1909). In 
"The Great Divide," produced first under the title of "The 
Sabine Woman," Moody wrote a dramatic story on a fundamen- 
tal, and hence a modern, aspect of life. The problem of the 
play is stated flippantly yet truly by the heroine's sister-in-law : 

Here on the one hand is the primitive, the barbaric woman, falling 
in love with a romantic stranger, who, like some old Viking on a harry, 
cuts her with his two-handed sword from the circle of her kinsmen, 



446 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

and bears her away on his dragon ship toward the midnight sun. 
Here on the other hand is the derived, the civilized woman, with a 
civilized nervous system, observing that the creature eats bacon with 
his bowie knife, knows not the manicure, has the conversation of a pre- 
occupied walrus, the instincts of a jealous caribou, and the endearments 
of a dancing crab in the mating season. . . . Ruth is one of those peo- 
ple who can't live in a state of divided feeling. She sits staring at this 
cleavage in her life. ... All I mean is that when she married her man 
she married him for keeps. And he did the same by her. 

The play was produced in Chicago, put on for a long run 
in New York and on tour, and presented in London, and in 
191 7 was revived for a successful run in New York again. 
" The Faith Healer," the idea for which occurred to Moody 
in 1898, was completed ten years later, after the success of the 
first play. The theme is not so close to common experience 
as that of " The Great Divide," and perhaps because of this as 
well as the subtler treatment it did not draw such audiences. 
Both plays end on a high spiritual level, but the second failed 
to register in the " box office " because the relief scenes are 
grim rather than amusing and because there is no fleshly 
element in the love of the hero and the heroine. 

Percy MacKaye (1875- ) embodies the meeting of the 
older traditions — his father was Steele MacKaye (see p. 439) — 
and the most recent development in American drama, the rise 
of pageantry and the civic festival. As a professional dramatist 
he has been prolific to the extent of some twenty-five plays, 
pageants, and operas. His acted plays have varied in range 
and subject from contemporary social satire to an interesting 
succession of echoes from the literary past — plays like "The 
Canterbury Pilgrims" (1903), "Jeanne DArc" (1906), and 
" Sappho and Phaon " (1907), which he seems to have under- 
taken, in contrast to Hovey, for their picturesque and poetic 
value alone. His special contribution, however, has been to the 
movement for an uncommercialized civic and national theater 
through the preparation of a number of community celebrations. 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 447 

These include the Saint Gaudens Pageant at Cornish, New 
Hampshire (1905), the Gloucester Pageant (1903), " Sanctuary, 
a Bird Masque" (19 13), "St. Louis, a Civic Masque " (1914), and 
"Caliban, a Community Masque" (New York, 1916, and Boston, 
191 7). The fusing interest in a common artistic undertaking 
has brought together whole cities in the finest kind of demo- 
cratic enthusiasm, and the effects have not been merely tempo- 
rary, for in a community such as St. Louis the permanent 
benefits are still evident in the community chorus and in the 
beautiful civic theater which is the annual scene of memorable 
productions witnessed by scores of thousands of spectators, 

Charles Rann Kennedy (1871- ), the last of the drama- 
tists to be considered here, is a man in whom a technical 
mastery of the play is combined with a high degree of poetic 
fervor. He was born in Derby, England, coming from a family 
which has been famed for classical scholarship .1 His own 
education was largely pursued outside of the schools, and he 
is not a university man, but no element is more important in 
his preparation for play-writing than his intimate knowledge 
of the classical and, especially, the Greek drama. Between the 
ages of thirteen and sixteen he was office boy, clerk, and 
telegraph operator, but always imaginatively interested in the 
technical aspects of his jobs. During his early twenties he 
was a lecturer and writer, and it is a matter of literary as well 
as personal moment that in 1898 he married Edith Wynne 
Matthison, widely known for her work with Irving, with Tree, 
and at the New Theater and as the creator of leading parts 
in her husband's plays. Since the beginning of his author- 
ship Mr. Kennedy has lived in the United States, of which 
he is now a citizen. 

His dramatic work has fallen into two groups : " The 
Terrible Meek " and " The Necessary Evil " — Short Plays for 

1 In the " Sketch Book " Washington Irving concludes " Rural Life in 
England " with a poem by the Reverend Rann Kennedy, A.M., a great-uncle 
of the dramatist. 



448 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Small Casts — and his Seven Plays for Seven Players. As 
in the cases of Moody and Hovey already cited, his plays are 
part of an inclusive program — a program which is the more 
remarkable on account of the fact that it took definite shape 
in the course of a single discussion with a group of literary 
friends — G. B. Shaw, Gilbert Chesterton, and Hilaire Belloc 
among them — before he came to this country. As* a result of 
this discussion he undertook to write seven plays : each for five 
men and two women, each holding the mien between a height- 
ened and decorative romance and an objective and unimagina- 
tive realism, each dealing with a separate great central theme 
in life, each attempting a new or revived technical difficulty 
in play construction, and each subjected to the most rigid con- 
formity to the dramatic unities, being written with no break in 
time sequence or shift of scene. 

The series includes (i) " The Winterfeast " (1906), of which 
the central theme is "The Lie and Hate in Life which destroy"; 
(2) "The Servant in the House" (1907), on "The Truth and 
Love in Life which preserve " ; (3) " The Idol-Breaker " 
(1913), on "Freedom"; (4) "The Rib of the Man" (1916), 
on " The New Woman already in the World, and the New 
Warrior coming as fast as the European War will let him " ; 
(5) " The Army with Banners " (19 17), on " The Coming of the 
Lord in Power and Glory and the New World now culmi- 
nating." Of these five, all but the fourth have been produced, 
" The Rib of the Man " having been withheld temporarily 
because of its nonmilitant theme and the resultant managerial 
timidity ; and all but the fifth have been published. The series 
will be completed with " The Fool from the Hills," the cen- 
tral theme being " The Bread of Life, or The Food Problem " ; 
and the last will be "The Isle of the Blest," on "The Con- 
summation of Life in what Men call Death." 

Plays written in such a progression are clearly approached 
in a spirit of high seriousness and with little regard or any 
expectation of immediate applause. But they are also written 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 449 

in a spirit of high defiance, with deliberate consciousness of the 
methods employed, and an inspired certainty that they will be 
heard at last. Adam — the Idol-Breaker — has thrown down 
the definite challenge : 

" I 've told these people things before. Many times. Why, 
it was me, six years ago, as called them here, and told them of 
the brotherhood of man." [Cf. " The Servant in the House."] 

" Well, didn't they listen to you, that time ? " says Naomi. 

"Ay, at first," replies Adam, "while I was new to them. 
Then they turned again to idols ; and twisted my plain mean- 
ing into tracts for Sunday School. I up and spoke again, and 
told them of the lies and hate they lived by. [Cf. "The Winter- 
feast."] Shewed them the death and bitterness of it ! — Well, 
they soon let me know about that. I preached their own God's 
gospel to them, and brought Christ's Murder to their blood- 
stained doors. [Cf. " The Terrible Meek."] They spat upon 
me. I told them of the lusts as fed their brothels; [cf. "The 
Necessary Evil "] and every red-eyed wolf among them said 
I lied. Even when they didn't speak, I knew the meaning 
of their leering silence. This time, it 's freedom — the thing 
they 're always bragging of ; and as long as I am in the world, 
they '11 have it dinned into their heads, as freedom is n't all a 
matter of flags and soldiers' pop-guns. It 's something they 've 
got to sweat for. Don't you think they 're going to get off 
easy, once I see them stuck in front of me ! 

" Oh, I make them laugh, all right. They want to be 
amused. Lot of jaded johnnies ! Every one of them thinking 
I mean his next-door neighbor ; and I mean just him ! " 

In "The Winterfeast" there is no laughter; at most only 
a smile in the first meeting of the two young lovers. It is a 
relentless tale of Nemesis following on the path of hatred, set 
in Iceland of the eleventh century, told in the tone and at 
times plainly in the manner of Sophocles. All the others of 
the Seven Plays, however, are put in the present day, with 
characters who are modern examples of perennial types, with 



450 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

abundant "relief scenes " in confirmation of Adam's " I make 
them laugh," and with an undertone of irony, — whimsical, 
derisive, grave, or bitter, as the occasions demand. Of these 
" The Servant in the House " has been the preeminent popu- 
lar success because of its appeal to the conventionally religious, 
who accepted its pervasive beneficence and ignored its strictures 
on the church. 

None of Mr. Kennedy's plays is more completely repre- 
sentative of his spirit, his purpose, and his method than " The 
Rib of the Man." It is located on an island in the ^gean, 
amid " the never-ending loveliness of all good Greek things." 
It is dedicated to the New Woman, to whom a recently 
unearthed altar inscribed " To the Mother of the Gods " has 
given the authority of the ages. The persons of the play are 
morality types, although intensely human. They are " David 
Fleming, an image of God, the Man ; Rosie Fleming, an help- 
meet for him, the Rib ; Archie Legge, a gentleman, a Beast 
of the Earth ; Basil Martin, an aviator, a Fowl of the Air ; 
Peter Prout, a scientist, the Subtle One ; Ion, the gardener, 
the Voice Warning ; and Diana Brand, a spare rib, the Flaming 
Sword." And finally, the play is written " with an inner and 
an outer meaning, symbolical, instinct with paradox and irony, 
leading deeply unto truth," 

Only one of Mr. Kennedy's plays has achieved a popular 
triumph, and the success of that one was due to its limited 
and somewhat perverted interpretation. They all, however, 
repay study and disclose new depths with each re-reading. 
Serious art rarely makes quick conquests. Audiences of spirit 
and intellect will develop for them as they have for the plays 
of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, The new audience, the new theater, 
and the new drama — old as the oldest literature — in due time 
will come to their own again. 



CONTEMPORARY DRAMA 45 1 

BOOK LIST 
Plays by Individual Men 

Clyde Fitch. The Plays of Clyde Fitch, Memorial Edition, edited by 
M. J. Moses and Virginia Gerson, 191 5. 

Richard Hovey. Plays, uniform edition, 1907-1908. 

Charles Rann Kennedy. The plays have been published in succession 
by Harper's. 

Percy Mackaye. Poems and Plays. 1916. 2 vols. 

William Vaughn Moody. Poems and Plays. 191 2. 2 vols. 

Augustus Thomas. Arizona, Alabama. Dramatic Publishing Co. As 
a Man Thinks. Duffield. The Witching Hour, Oliver Goldsmith, 
The Harvest Moon, In Mizzoura, Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots, The Other 
Girl, The Capitol, and The Earl of Pawtucket. Samuel French. 

Collections 

Dickinson, Thomas H. Chief Contemporary Dramatists. Boston, 

191 5. (Contains four American plays.) 
Moses, Montrose J. Representative Plays by American Dramatists. 

3 vols. Vol. I, 1918 (contains ten plays, 1759-1824) ; Vols. II and 

III announced. 
Pierce, John Alexander. The Masterpieces of Modern Drama. 

Abridged in Narrative with Dialogue of the Great Scenes. 

Preface witTi a critical essay by Brander Matthews. (Vol. II con- 
tains selections from twelve American plays.) 
- QuiNN, A. H. Representative American Plays. 1917. Twenty-five 

plays, 1769-1911. 

Criticism 

, ANDREViTs, Charlton. The Drama To-day. I9i3._ 
Burton, Richard. The New American Drama. 1913. 
Cheney, Sheldon. The New Movement in the Theatre. 1914. 
Clark, Barrett H. The British and American Drama of To-day. 

1915. 
Dickinson, Thomas H. The Case of American Drama. 1915. 
Eaton, W. P. The American Stage of To-day. 1908. 
Eaton, W. P. At the New Theatre and Others. 1910. 
Hapgood, Norman. The Stage in America, 1897-1900. 1901. 
Henderson, Archibald. The Changing Drama. 19 14. 
Mackaye, Percy. The Playhouse and the Play. 1909. 
Mackaye, Percy. The Civic Theatre. 191 2. 
Matthews, Brander. Inquiries and Opinions. 1907. 
Matthews, Brander. The Historical Novel and Other Essays. 

1901. 
Moses, M. J. The American Dramatist. 1911. 
RuHL, Arthur. Second Nights. 1914. 



452 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Magazine Articles 

The magazine articles on the drama cited in the " Reader's Guide " 
are extremely numerous. From among those since 1 900 the following are 
of special interest : 

1900-1904. Development of the drama. B. Matthews. Nation, VoL 

LXXVII, pp. 346-347. Oct. 29, 1903. 
Poetry and the stage. H. W. Boynton. Atlantic, Vol. XCII, 

pp. 120-126. July, 1903. 
Theater and the critics. Nation, Vol. LXXIII, p. 106. August 8. 

Outlook, Vol. LXIX, pp. 528-529. Nov. 2, 1901. 
Future of drama. B. Matthews. Bookman, Vol. XVII, pp. 31- 

36. March, 1903. 
Makers of the drama of to-day. B. Matthews. Atlantic, Vol. 

XCI, pp. 504-512. April, 1903. 
1905-1909. Literature and the modern drama. H. A. Jones. Atlantic, Vol. 

XCVIII, pp. 796-807. December, 1906. 
Playwright and the playgoers. B. Matthews. Atlantic, Vol. CII, 

pp. 421-426. September, 1908. 
Elevation of the stage. Atlantic, Vol. XCIX, pp. 721-723. 

May, 1907. 
New theatre. M. Merington. Bookman, Vol. XXVII, pp. 561- 

566. August, 1908. 
Theatrical conditions. Nation, Vol. LXXXiV, pp. 182-183. 

Feb. 21, 1907. 
1910-1914. What is wrong with the American drama ? C.Hamilton. Book- 
man, Vol. XXXIX, pp. 314-319. May, 1914. 
Exotic plays. Natioft, Vol. XCIV, pp. 142-143. Feb. 8, 1912. 

191 5. Decay of respectability. F. Hackett. New Republic, Vol. II, 

p. 51. Feb. 13, 1915. 
Work of the Drama League of America. R. Burton. Nation, 
Vol. XCIX, pp. 668-669. Dec. 3, 1914. 

1916. Realism of the American stage. H. de W. Fuller. Nation, Vol. 

CII, pp. 307-310. March 16, 1916. 
The Public and the theater. C. Hamilton. Bookman, Vol. XLIV, 

pp. 252-257. November, 1916. 
The PubHc and the theater. Reply to Mr. Hamilton. G. R. 

Robinson. Bookman, Vol. XLIV, p. 401. December, 1916. 

1917. Belasco and the independent theater. C. Hamilton. Bookman, 

Vol. XLV, pp. 8-12. March, 1917. 
East and West on the stage. Nation, Vol. CIV, p. 32 1 . March 1 5, 
1917. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE LATER POETRY 

All of the calculated activities for the promotion of the stage 
during the last few years in America have as yet been limited 
and indirect in their results. Among them it is very possible 
that there was a blazing of the way for another development of 
great importance which has taken place without any leagues or 
schools or organized propaganda. This has been the restora- 
tion of poetry as a living language. Not only have authors' 
readings taken the place of dramatic interpretations in the 
lecture market but the audiences who flock to hear Tagore and 
Noyes and Masefield and Gibson and Bynner and Lindsay 
and Frost go to listen to poems with which they are already 
familiar and to get that sense of personal aquaintance with 
poets which ten years ago they coveted with playwrights and, 
further back, with novelists. The dominant fact about the con- 
temporary reading public is its reawakened zest for poetry. 

In 1890 the English poetry-reading world was chiefly con- 
scious of the passing of its leading singers for the last half 
century. It was a period when they were recalling Emerson's 
" Terminus " and Longfellow's " Ultima Thule," Whitman's 
"November Boughs" and Whittier's "A Lifetime," Tenny- 
son's "Crossing the Bar" and Browning's "Asolando." There 
was no group in the prime of life who were adequate successors 
to this greater choir. Stedman, Aldrich, and Stoddard had 
courted the muse as a kind of alien divinity and enjoyed ex- 
cursions into the distant land of her dwelling-place. But their 
poetry was a poetry of accomplishment ; an embellishment of 
life, and not an integral part of it (see pp. 324-326). It was a 
period when people were tempted with some reason to dwell on 
453 



454 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the "good old days," and for a while it seemed as though it 
would be long before the world would see their like again. 

The spirit of the times seemed to be expressed by a group 
of younger artists who were in conscious revolt against Victorian 
literature and rather noisily assertive on their favorite theme of 
art for art's sake. They were occupied in composing intricate 
and ingenious poems. They were engrossed like Masters's 
" Petit, the Poet " in inditing 

Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, 

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick. 

Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, 

While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines ! 

Some of them did pastels in prose, and many edited transitory 
little periodicals like The Yellow Book, The Chap Book, The 
Lark, and Truth in boston. Fourteen of these came into 
existence in the United States in the first two months of 1897, 
and almost none of them survived till the Fourth of July of that 
year. Probably the only lines in any of them recalled by the 
readers of to-day are Gelett Burgess's quatrain on the purple 
cow. The burden of these young poets, was many words fairly 
spoken of " organic growth," " development," " progress," " lib- 
eralism," " freedom of speech," and " independent thought " ; 
and the chief product of their thinking was a frank and free 
Bohemianism, an honest unconventionality much more real than 
the diluted thing about which Stedman and Aldrich had rimed 
thirty years before. 

The most vigorous and enduring of the new group was 
Richard Hovey (1864-1900). He was Western-born, schooled 
at Washington, and a graduate of Dartmouth in 1885. His 
next years included study in the General Theological Seminary 
in New York, an assistantship in a New York ritualistic church, 
excursions into journalism and acting, and then, after some 
years as poet and dramatist, a professorship of EngHsh litera- 
ture in Barnard College, Columbia University. Hovey grew 



THE LATER POETRY 455 

perceptibly during his eager enjoyment of these various pur- 
suits. For a while he seemed content to sing the praises of 
convivial comradeship : 

For we know the world is glorious 

And the goal a golden thing, 
And that God is not censorious 

When his children have their fling ; 

but he passed before long to the stage in which the good fellow- 
ship of youth was a symbol of something far larger than itself 
— nothing less than the promise of humankind. The ode deliv- 
ered before his fraternity convention in 1896 quite transcends 
the sort of effusion usually evoked by such occasions. The 
spring in the air, in the world, and in the heart of youth culmi- 
nate in the oft-sung " Stein Song " ; and after it the poem goes 
on to " The first low stirring of that greater spring," 

Of something potent burning through the earth, 
Of something vital in the procreant air. 

This potent something is the " unceasing purpose " of Tenny- 
son, but with a difference, for in Hovey's mind it is not 
the purpose of a detached God who imposes his will benevo- 
lently on mankind from without, but the creative impulse which 
is inherent in life itself, the evidence of the divine spirit in the 
heart of man. Comradeship, then, became to Hovey a symbol 
of altruism, and he looked beyond this springtide of the year 
and of the youthful collegians to the time when science, art, 
and religion should emancipate men in the truth that should 
set them free and bring them, in spite of delays, in the fullness 
of time to " the greater to-morrow." 

Yet while Hovey was uplifted by the fine fervor of such a 
faith, he experienced a reaction with the outbreak of the Spanish- 
American War. In the sudden self -righteousness of an inflamed 
patriotism he nationalized God and deified war. Excited beyond 
measure by the immediate issue, he not only justified America 
against Spain but, forgetting all the lessons of evolution, he 



456 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

declared that the race could develop only through the repetition 
of old experiences. 

By strife as well as loving — strife, 

The Law of Life, — 

In brute and man the climbing has been done 

And shall be done hereafter. Since man was 

No upward-climbing cause 

Without the sword has ever yet been won. 

His mistake lay in justifying all wars in order to justify the 
national altruism of the war with Spain, and his fallacy came 
in his assumption that biological and physical life were governed 
by the same laws. For the moment Hovey turned " jingo," as 
most of his countrymen did, yet even then he invoked the 
sword for the suppression of tyranny and not in the name of 
nationalistic ambition. 

The home of Hovey's imagination was where the true poet's 
always is — "' far in the vast of sky, . . . too high for sound of 
strife, or any violation of the town." From this high vantage 
point he sang the glories of the things he loved the best, but 
with maturity he moved from the world of material pleasure to 
the realms of spiritual adventure. In 1893 he wrote 

Down the world with Mama ! 
That 's the life for me ! 
Wandering with the wandering wind, 
Vagabond and unconfined ! 

Five years later he could no longer catalogue his places on 
the map, for his goal was " the unknown " and " the wilder- 
ness " in pursuit of the high human adventure which Moody 
was to celebrate in his '" Road Hymn for the Start." In a par- 
allel way Hovey's first conception of fellowship rose from the 
early relish for beer and song to the fellowship of kindred souls 
of which the fine flowering is the love of man and woman. 

Spirit to spirit finds its voiceless way, 

As tone melts meeting in accordant tone, — 



THE LATER POETRY 457 

Oh, then our souls, far in the vast of sky, 

Look from a tower, too high for sound of strife 
Or any violation of the town. 

Where the great vacant winds of God go by, 
And over the huge misshapen city of life 
Love pours his silence and his moonlight down. 

At the age of thirty-six, just on the threshold of maturity, 
Hovey died. 

William Vaughn Moody (1869-19 10) was another son of the 
Middle West. Born in southern Indiana, he lost his mother 
in his fifteenth year and his father, a river-steamboat captain, 
in his seventeenth. By alternate study and teaching he pre- 
pared himself for Harvard, and entering at somewhat more 
than the average age he completed his college work in three 
years and follov/ed these with a year in Europe as private 
tutor. In addition to a receptiveness for learning he had the 
capacity for a rich and varied culture which is sometimes mis- 
takenly thought to belong only to blue-blooded inheritors of 
family tradition. From the close of his residence in Cambridge 
till his death, seventeen years later, Moody's life included long 
and extended travels, varied and profound study, eight years' 
teaching at the University of Chicago, from which President 
Harper was reluctant to accept his resignation, and distinguished 
work as painter, poet, and dramatist. Suddenly stricken with a 
fatal illness, he died in 19 10. 

Mention has already been made of his work as playwright 
(see pp. 445, 446). His lyric and narrative poems all have the 
same breadth of view which is inherent in his poetic dramas. 
He was familiar with a wide range of the world's art and litera- 
ture, but in the work which he chose to collect for republication 
he was imitative of none. His imagination roved freely through 
all time and space. "Gloucester Moors" were the vantage 
point from which he conceived the earth as a " vast, outbound 
ship of souls " ; " Old Pourquoi " challenged the scheme of 
creation from beneath the Norman sky ; " The Death of Eve " 



458 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

is derived from the Hebrew past, "The Masque of Judgment " 
from the Greek, " A Dialogue in Purgatory " from the Itahan, 
" The Fountain " from early American legend, " On a Soldier 
Fallen in the Philippines " from a current event. Thus he did 
not maintain his citizenship of the world by any denial of alle- 
giance to America. In the third section of "' An Ode in Time 
of Hesitation " he sketched as splendid a pageant of America 
as has ever been devised. The Cape Ann children seeking the 
arbutus, the hill lads of Tennessee harking to the wild geese 
on their northern flight, are one with the youth of Chicago, the 
renewing green of the wheat fields, the unrolling of the rivers 
from the white Sierras, the downward creep of Alaskan glaciers, 
and the perennial palm-crown of Hawaii. It is in very truth 

the eagle nation Milton saw, 
Mewing its mighty youth. 

Moody's love of America did not lead him to embrace the 
" manifest destiny " illusion. He was quite as conscious of 
the misdirection of human leadership as he was of the riches 
with which God had endowed the natural land. "' Gloucester 
Moors " is deeply solicitous for a future which seems to be in- 
sured for the grasping capitalist ; " The Brute " is both more 
vigorous and more hopeful in its certitude that the factory sys- 
tem in its worst forms is a short-lived social abortion. The 
demon of the machine is sure to be caught and subdued : 

He must give each man his portion, each his pride and worthy place ; 
He must batter down the arrogant and lift the weary face. 
On each vile mouth set purity, on each low forehead grace. 

These poems were of life within America or without it, but in 
"An Ode in Time of Hesitation " and " On a Soldier Fallen in 
the Philippines" Moody warned the rulers in Washington that 
the country, now awake to its duties in the world, would for- 
give blindness, but baseness it would smite. Finally, in " The 
Quarry " he cried out in pride at America's fine part in preventing 



THE LATER POETRY 459 

the partitioning of helpless China by the grasping European 
empires, — the achievement of the poet-diplomat, John Hay. 

Throughout all Moody's work is a constant undercurrent of 
evolutionary thought — not the brutal mechanism associated 
with the term " Darwinism," but the aspiring impulse within 
all life which makes it rise not through struggle against outer 
forces so much as through the innate impulse to develop. In 
the sardonic " Menagerie " the idea is ironically stated : 

Survival of the fittest, adaptation, 
And all their other evolution terms. 
Seem to omit one small consideration, 

which is no less than the existence of souls : 

Restless, plagued, impatient things. 
All dream and unaccountable desire ; 

and these souls are expressions of the universal soul which finds 
its own salvation in unceasing " groping, testing, passing on," 
— the creative struggle described by Raphael in " The Masque 
of Judgment " as 

The strife of ripening suns and withering moons, 
Marching of ice-floes, and the nameless wars 
Of monster races laboring to be man. 

In his attitude toward and his literary treatment of woman 
Moody was emphatically modern. He was far beyond the super- 
cilious and hollow amenities with which eighteenth-century 
poetry was filled, and he was not satisfied with the sincerer 
expression of deep personal tributes to individual women. In 
his philosophy woman was the dominant influence in the devel- 
opment of humankind. Eve and Prometheus were one in seek- 
ing the knowledge and power to lift man above brute creation 
and in producing the clash between God and man which was 
the price of knowledge and the cost of progress. But Prome- 
theus was a poor and defeated character in comparison ; for 
Moody, in Eve and Pandora, presented woman not only as 



46o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

the donor and the fulfillment of love but as the final agent of 
reconciliation between the human and the divine. In the vari- 
ous poems there are acknowledgments of awe, of reverence, 
of spiritual love, and of passion ; taken together they show the 
same breadth of view that belongs to the human equation in 
which Moody regards woman as the greatest factor. It is most 
significant that the dramatic trilogy was planned to conclude with 
a song of Eve, and that twice — in " I am the Woman " and 
part five of "The Death of Eve" — Moody composed studies 
toward that final song that was never perfected. Both progress 
through the ages when woman was subtly molded by man's 
conception of her, so that her happiness and her very being 
consisted in conforming herself to him. 

Still, still with prayer and ecstasy she strove 
To be the woman they did well approve, 
That, narrowed to their love, 
She might have done with bitterness and blame. 

And in both she appears as the indomitable Promethean spirit 
who in the end was to fulfill that plan which in the beginning 
she had endangered. There is no reference to any woman in 
in any of Moody's poems which is out of harmony with this 
dominating and progressive idea. 

For several reasons Moody's poetry is not easy to read and 
is therefore undestined to wide popularity (see pp. 263, 264). 
He was not interested to compose simple lyrics or narratives. 
Seldom does he aid the reader by means of even an implied 
narrative thread. The poems inspired by history are not self- 
explanatory nor accompanied by footnotes. Moody consistently 
employed events, whether actual- or imagined, as mere avenues 
of approach to emotional and spiritual experiences, and he 
expected the reader to contribute to the poems from his ovm 
resourceful imagination. It is because the whole meaning is 
not laid out on the surface of his verses — like Christmas-card 
sentiments — that Moody has become very largely a poet's poet. 



THE LATER POETRY 461 

Their instinctive grasp of the figurative deeper meanings, their 
immediate response to elusive metaphor, and their understand- 
ing of his vigorous, exact, but sometimes recondite diction make 
them his best audience. For they too can most nearly appreciate 
the distinguished beauties of his work — his wide and intimate 
knowledge of world literature, the opulence of his style, the 
firmness of his structure, the scrupulousness of his detail. 
Through the rising and the risen poets of the present genera- 
tion Moody's influence is exerted on thousands who are all 
unconscious of it. 

An approach to contemporary American poetry in a fraction 
of a chapter at the end of a general history can be justified on 
only one ground : it serves thF purpose of a guideboard on a 
transcontinental highway. American literature was not con- 
cluded with the deaths of the great New England group nor 
has it come to an end since then. The student should recog- 
nize this in his respect for the fine promise of what is now 
being written, and he should recognize that the study of our 
past literature can bear no richer fruit than a sane understand- 
ing of the literature of the day. Furthermore he should be intel- 
ligent enough to see that literature need not be old to be fit 
for study — that it is not only absurd but vicious to assume (as 
used to be said, with a difference, of the Indian) that there is 
no good poet but a dead poet. These few pages are therefore 
devoted to a half-dozen writers who represent tendencies. They 
are arbitrarily selected as the contemporary dramatists in the 
preceding chapter were. Yet their weight is greatly reenforced 
by the many others to whom no allusion can be made. A 
comparison of the three books on recent American poetry sug- 
gests the speed of the literary current. Miss Rittenhouse's "The 
Younger American Poets " (1904) includes eighteen poets of 
whom thirteen were born before 1865. Miss Lowell's "Ten- 
dencies in Modern American Poetry " (19 17) includes six poets, 
none of whom were mentioned in the earlier book, and the 
oldest of whom was born in the closing days of 1869. Of the 



462 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

sixteen poets indicated by name in the chapter headings of 
Mr, Louis Untermeyer's "New Era in American Poetry" 
(19 19), only three were born before 1875. 

The reading of contemporary poetry should be done with 
zest and without calculation, but the study of the same material 
must be approached with self-conscious deliberateness and with 
a definite resolve not to be carried away by the cheap and easy 
generalizations current on the lips of the careless talker. Con- 
temporary poetry is not all of one kind nor is it chiefly char- 
acterized by defiant revolt against old forms and old ideas. It 
is true that in all branches of artistic endeavor new methods 
and new points of view are being advanced. In music Debussy 
and Schoenberg, in painting Cezanne and Matisse, in sculpture 
Rodin and his disciples, in stage setting and costuming Gordon 
Craig and Leon Bakst, have shocked and surprised quite as 
many as they have edified, and have given rise to the same 
sort of querulous protest indulged in by those who talk as if all 
modern poetry were typified by the most extravagant verses of 
Alfred Kreymborg, or "Anne Knish." But in poetry most of 
the recent work has not been wantonly bizarre, most of the 
more distinguished verse has not been "free," and most of 
the men and women who have written free verse have shown 
and have practiced a firm mastery of the established forms. 
The point, then, is to maintain an open mind and to make sure 
of conclusions before adopting them, and the surest method of 
doing these two student-like things is to read and study authors 
by the bookful and not by the pseudo-royal road of antholo- 
gies and eclectic magazines. If you want to become acquainted 
with a man you will sit down at leisure with him in his study, 
instead of forming snapshot judgments from contact at after- 
noon teas, and you will form your own opinion in preference 
to gleaning it from the conversation of others. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869- ), the oldest of this 
latter group, was born in the same year with Moody and is now 
in the prime of life. The Tilbury of many of his poems is really 



THE LATER POETRY 463 

the town of his upbringing — Gardiner, Maine. It is an unusual 
but not a unique village in America — a colonial old-world vil- 
lage. The atmosphere of Puritanism had not been blown away 
from it, and it still felt the subtle influence of a preeminent 
family. When " the squire " passed, 

We people on the pavement looked at him ; 
He was a gentleman from sole to crown, 
Clean-favored, and imperially slim. 

It is easy to think of Tilbury as an English town ; it is 
utterly different from Lindsay's Springfield or Masters's Spoon 
River. It is not without significance that the clearest single 
picture presents a little boy of twelve as the companion of 
" Isaac and Archibald," two old men on the ominous verge of 
superannuation. It was life in Gardiner that gives so real a 
sense of the town on the Avon in " Ben Jonson Entertains 
a Man from Stratford." In 1891 Mr. Robinson entered Har- 
vard, withdrawing at the end of two years and entering business 
in New York City. Here he remained till 19 10, the last five 
years as an appointee of President Roosevelt in the New York 
Customhouse, and since the latter date he has lived again in 
Gardiner, bearing some resemblance in his mellowed maturity, 
perhaps, to Larry Scammon in his play "' The Porcupine." 

As a matter of literary history the most striking fact about 
Mr. Robinson is that the poetry-reading public has been re- 
developed since he began to write. Although his first volume, 
"The Children of the Night," appeared in 1897, and his second, 
" Captain Craig," in 1902, it was possible for him to be omitted 
from " The Younger American Poets " of 1904. With " The 
Town down the River " in 19 10 his recognition began to come, 
and with the republication of " Captain Craig " the public be- 
came aware of a volume which they could have been reading 
for full thirteen years. 

Miss Lowell displays a mild contempt for the title poem of 
this book, and Mr. Phelps — in his "Advance of English 



464 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Poetry in the Twentieth Century" — echoes her verdict. Yet 
for many readers there is a splendor in it and a richness that 
brings them back to it again and again. It is doubtless long, 
discursive, and condensible. In fact it is already condensed in 
such a bit as " Flammonde." It is an elaboration of the title 
lyric for " The Children of the Night " ; but only a wanton per- 
version of criticism will discount a philosophical poem for not 
submitting to lyric standards. It is a poem of childhood, sun- 
light, laughter, and hope declaimed by an indomitable old vaga- 
bond of eternity who is invincible in death and is fittingly 
borne to the grave while the trombones of the Tilbury band 
blare the Dead March in "' Saul." Captain Craig is a character 
who would not be his complete self without his verbosity. His 
type, in fact, is never succinct. They are extravagant of time, 
of gesture, of vocal and rhetorical emphasis, of words them- 
selves. Out of the abundance of their hearts their mouths 
speak all sorts of irresponsible, whimsical, exalted, and splendid 
extravagance. They give voice to the dumb, and they amuse 
and stimulate the good listeners, but they bore the cleverly 
communicative, who dislike any consecutive talk but their own. 
Thus, for example, the captain writes on one May day : 

I have yearned 
In many another season for these days, 
And having them with God's own pageantry 
To make me glad for them, — yes, I have cursed 
The sunlight and the breezes and the leaves 
To think of men on stretchers and on beds, 



Or of women working where a man would fall — 

Flat-breasted miracles of cheerfulness 

Made neuter by the work that no man counts 

Until it waits undone ; children thrown 

To feed their veins and souls with offal. . . . 

Yes, 
I have had half a mind to blow my brains out 
Sometimes ; and I have gone from door to door 



THE LATER POETRY 465 

Ragged myself, trying to do something — 
Crazy, I hope. — But what has this to do 
With Spring ? Because one half of humankind 
Lives here in hell, shall not the other half 
Do any more than just for conscience' sake 
Be miserable ? Is this the way for us 
To lead these creatures up to find the light. 
Or the way to be drawn down to find the dark 
Again ? 

Captain Craig, in a word, is self-expression in very being 
and condemns in joyous scorn the man who believes that life 
is best fulfilled through discipline and renunciation. Instead he 
offers something positive : 

Take on yourself 
But your sincerity, and you take on 
Good promise for all climbing ; fly for truth, 
And hell shall have no storm to crush your flight. 
No laughter to vex down your loyalty. 

This is the note throughout all Robinson's poems and plays. 
His disbelief in negativism leads him often to be impatient and 
caustic and leads the cloudy minded to timid deprecation of his 
cynicism, not knowing the difference between this and irony ; 
but Mr. Robinson is never cynical toward the things that are 
more excellent. He is only convinced that people's Puritan 
convictions as to what is more excellent result in a perverted 
estimate ; he is only attempting to substitute light for shadow, 
laughter for gloom ; he is only saying with Larry Scammon : 

" Stop me if I am too cheerful ; but at the same time, if I can in- 
stil the fertile essence of Hope into this happy household, for God's 
sake, let me do it. . . . You had far better — all of you — begin to 
get yourselves out of your own light, and cease to torment your 
long-bedevilled heads with the dark doings of bogies that have no 
real existence." 

As a craftsman Mr. Robinson has won distinction by his 
simple, direct realism. He employs for the most part the old 



466 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

iambic measures, a sentence structure which is often conversa- 
tional, and a diction which is severe in its restraint. There are 
few " purple patches " in his poetry, but there are many clear 
flashes of incisive phrasing. His work is like a May day in his 
own seacoast town — not balmy, but bracing, with lots of sparkle 
on the blue, and the taste of the east wind through it all. 

Robert Frost (1875- ) is known as the author of three 
books of verse: "A Boy's Will," 1913, "North of Boston," 
1914, and "Mountain Interval," 1916. He is known also — 
and rightly — as the voice and embodiment of rural New Eng- 
land. Yet he was born in San Francisco, his mother was born 
in Edinburgh, he first came to New England at the age of ten, 
and he lived for the next eight schoolboy years in a mill town, 
Lawrence, Massachusetts. Nevertheless, in his capacity for 
receiving impressions, he seemed to have a selective memory 
which made him sensitive to the aspects of country life in the 
regions north of Boston — the regions trod by nine generations 
of forbears on his father's side of the family. And so it was 
that though his first two volumes were published in London, 
there is no local trace of the old country in them, nothing in 
them that he had not known in farm or village between 1885 
and 19 1 2, when he set sail with his wife and children toward 
a residence of two and a half years in England. On his return 
to America he bought a farm in New Hampshire. Since 19 16 
he has taught in Amherst College. 

The common statement that Mr. Frost is content solely to 
present the appearances of New England life should be given 
distinct qualifications in two respects : the first is that his 
earliest book, " A Boy's Will," is wholly subjective and ana- 
l)^ical, completely falling outside the generalization. And the 
second is that while " North of Boston " and " Mountain 
Interval " are objective pictures of New England life, the truth 
in them is by no means limited to New England, but is perti- 
nent to human kind, although deeply tinged with the hue of 
that particular district. 



THE LATER POETRY 467 

"A Boy's Will," a little volume, is made up of thirty-two lyrics, 
each of them complete and most of them lovely. They are not, 
however, detached, although it is an open question how many 
readers would see their relationship if this were not indicated in 
the table of contents. It is the record of a young artist's experi- 
ence who marries, withdraws to the country, revels in the isolation 
of winter, in the coming of spring, and in the farm beauties of 
summer. This isolation, however, cannot satisfy him long. Let 
the contents for Part Two show what happens : '" Revelation ' — 
He resolves to become intelligible, at least to himself, since 
there is no help else — ' The Trial by Existence ' — and to 
know definitely what he thinks about the soul ; ' In Equal 
Sacrifice ' — about love ; ' The Tuft of Flowers ' — about fel- 
lowship ; ' Spoils of the Dead ' — about death ; ' Pan with Us ' 
— about art (his own) ; ' The Demiurge's Laugh ' — about 
science." With the five lyrics of Part Three, the youth and 
his bride return to the world with misgivings : 

Out through the fields and the woods 
And over the walls I have wended ; 

I have climbed the hills of view 

And looked at the world, and descended ; 

I have come by the highway home, 
And lo, it is ended. 



Ah, when to the heart of man 
Was it ever less than a treason 

To go with the drift of things, 
To yield with a grace to reason, 

And bow and accept the end 
Of a love or a season ? 



This book does not represent the work of Frost as it appears 
in his later volumes, but it does represent the poet himself : 

A lover of the meadows and the woods. 
And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth. 



468 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The second volume, "' North of Boston," is twice as long as 
" A Boy's Will " and contains half as many titles. There 
would be nothing in this mathematical formula if it did not 
carry with it a real difference in content. But this second 
book is made up not of lyrics, but of unimpassioned vignettes 
of New England life. This is the grim New England which 
the poet attempted to shut out in " Love and a Question " : 

But whether or not a man was asked, 

To mar the love of two 
By harboring woe in the bridal house, 

The bridegroom wished he knew. 

The book presents the death of a farm laborer, the maddened 
bereavement of a mother whose child is buried within sight 
of the house, the black prospect faced by a household drudge 
who faces the insanity which is an inherited blight in her blood. 
They are not amiable pictures, and they offer neither problem 
nor solution, only the life itself. They are not, however, all 
equally grim. "The Mountain" tells of a township of sixty 
voters with only a fringe of level land around the looming 
pile. It dominates life, limits it, and rises above it, for few 
have either time or curiosity to reach the top. " The Black 
Cottage " presents a widowed relict of the Civil War who knew 
only her sacrifice and whose unthinking orthodoxy was as hazy 
as her political creed. With liberalism in the parish, the 
preacher was inclined to omit " descended into Hades " from 
the ritual : 

.... We could drop them 

Only — there was the bonnet in the pew. 

Such a phrase could n't have meant much to her. 

But suppose she had missed it from the Creed 

As a child misses the unsaid Good-night, 

And falls asleep with heartache — how should I feel ? 

Of another sort are the poems which have most of outdoor 
in them : " Mending Wall," the symbol of barriers between 
properties which the winters throw down ; " Blueberries," which 



THE LATER POETRY 469 

indicates the complex of ownership in a countryside filled with 
nature's gifts of uncultivated fruit; "After Apple Picking," 
the weariness forced upon the farmer in his effort to husband 
an embarrassment of orchard riches; and "The Woodpile" with 
its suggestion of the slow processes of nature contrasted with 
the temporal efforts of man. The woodpile is discovered far 
out in a swamp, long abandoned and vine-covered : 

.... I thought that only 
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks 
Could so forget his" handiwork on which 
He spent himself, the labour of his axe, 
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace 
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could 
With the slow smokeless burning of decay. 

The last volume, " Mountain Interval," is something of a 
composite, with elements in both the former two. One reads 
Mr. P>ost's pages thoughtfully and leaves them in a thoughtful 
mood. Not all are grim, but very few are gay. They have the 
rock-ribbed austerity of the country from which they spring and 
some of its beauty, too. They are suffused with the smoky haze 
of an Indian-summer day. 

Edgar Lee Masters (1869- ) was born in Kansas in the 
same year with Moody and Robinson. In the next year his 
family moved to Illinois, which is his real " native " state. As 
a boy he had wide opportunities for reading. At the age of 
twenty-one he entered Knox College and plunged with zest 
into the study of the classics, but was forced to withdraw at 
the end of the year because Mr. Masters, Sr., would acknowl- 
edge no value in these studies for the practice of law, toward 
which he was directing his son. After a brief experiment 
in independence the young man surrendered and eventually 
entered on a successful career as a Chicago attorney. Yet the 
law did not take complete possession of him ; he has always 
been a devoted reader of Greek literature. " Songs and Satires," 
published in 19 16, contains a few lyrics from a volume of 1898 



470 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

which was printed, but through an accident of the trade never 
pubhshed. One of these ends with the significant stanza : 

Helen of Troy, Greek art 
Hath made our heart thy heart, 

Thy love our love. 
For poesy, like thee, 
Must fly and wander free 

As the wild dove. 

Mr. Masters's next venture was a poetic drama in 1900, 
" Maximilian," a tragedy in verse which was accorded a few 
sympathetic reviews but no wide reading. Other works followed 
in the next fifteen years, some in law and some in literature. 
And finally, in 191 5, appeared the " Spoon River Anthology." 
This is in all probability the most widely circulated book of new 
poems in the history of American literature ; others may have 
achieved a greater total of copies during a long career, but it is 
doubtful whether any others have equaled fifty thousand within 
three years of publication. 

The most valuable single utterance on this much-discussed 
work is the richly compacted preface of Mr. Masters in "Toward 
the Gulf," with its inscription to William Marion Reedy. 
Mr. Masters had submitted various contributions to Reedy 's 
Mirror, but had received most of them back with friendly 
appeals for something fresh. The first five Spoon River epi- 
taphs were written almost casually in answer to this repeated 
challenge. At the same time they were a more than casual 
application of a hint from the Greek : a " resuscitation of the 
Greek epigrams, ironical and tender, satirical and sympathetic," 
assembled into an ultimate collection of nearly two hundred and 
fifty brief units, each a self-inscribed epitaph by one of the 
Spoon River townsfolk. These represent the chief types in an 
American country town and recognize in particular the usual 
line of cleavage between those who choose to be considered 
virtuous and those who do not care what they are considered. 
Unfortunately the first of these classes includes both the idealist 



THE LATER POETRY 471 

and the hypocrite ; and the second, both the conscious radical 
and the confirmed reprobate. A typical issue which might arise 
in such a town, as well as a typical alignment of forces, is de- 
scribed in "The Spooniad," the closing mock-heroic fragment 
and the longest unit in the book. 

The "Anthology" has been violently assailed as a wantonly 
cynical production, each assault on this ground carrying within 
itself a proof that the censor either had not read the book through 
or did not understand it. As a matter of fact the most impres- 
sive element in the book and the one which bulks largest in the 
last quarter of it are the victorious idealists. There is Davis 
Matlock, who decided to live life out like a god, sure of immor- 
tality. There is Tennessee Claflin Shope, who asserted the sover- 
eignty of his own soul, and Samuel Gardiner, who determined 
to live largely in token of his ample spirit, and the Village 
Atheist, who knew that only those who strive mightily could 
possess eternal life, and Lydia Htimphrey, who in her church 
found the vision of the poets. In spite of the protests of readers 
who were so disgusted with the Inferno of the earlier portion 
,that they never progressed to the concluding Paradiso, the 
book achieved its great circulation among a tolerant public and 
enviable applause from the most discriminating critics. 

" Spoon River " established Mr. Masters's reputation and 
prepared the public for further thrills and shocks in the vol- 
umes to follow. This expectation has been only half fulfilled. 
The certainty of a public hearing has naturally encouraged the 
poet to more rapid production, but the subsequent books — 
"Songs and Satires" and "The Great Valley" of 1916 and 
"Toward the Gulf" of 19 18 — have been divided both in- 
tone and content between the caustic informality for which 
Mr. Masters was known in his earlier work and the classic 
finish which is a return to his unknown, earliest style. 

In his treatment of sex, however, Mr. Masters has supplied 
the shocks and thrills expected, dealing with various aspects 
of passion with a frank minuteness which is sometimes 



4/2 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

distasteful and sometimes morbid. Uusually his discussions of 
passion are more analytical than picturesque. He assumes its 
existence as a dominant factor in life and discusses not the ex- 
perience itself so much as its influence. Frequently whole poems 
are concerned with it. He takes for granted passionate love 
without benefit of clergy, recording it without either idealizing 
it or defending it. Doubtless life has included the material for 
the " Dialogue at Perko's," for " Victor Rafolski on Art," and 
for "Widow La Rue," and certainly modern poetry supplies 
parallels in the works of other men. In a more significant way 
the sex psychology of Freud crops out in many poems not 
ostensibly devoted to it, as, for example, in "' To-morrow is my 
Birthday." This soliloquy attributed to Shakespeare in his 
tercentenary year stands in striking contrast to Mr. Robinson's 
" Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford." In these 
two poems (of about four hundred lines each) Mr. Robinson 
writes in the manner of Ben Jonson, paying his tribute to 
Shakespeare at the height of his powers in London, touching 
on his susceptibility to women but passing this to dilate on his 
almost superhuman wisdom ; Mr. Masters devotes the last two 
thirds of Shakespeare's monologue on the night of his last 
carousal to sex confessions which become increasingly gross as 
the bard becomes increasingly drunk. Mr. Robinson's passage 
is only a few lines in length and concludes : 

There 's no long cry for going into it, 
However, and we don't know much about it. 

Mr. Masters's approaches two hundred and fifty lines, begins 
with "The thing is sex," continues with 

Give me a woman, Ben, and I will pick 

Out of this April, by this larger art 

Of fifty-two, such songs as we have heard, 

Both you and I, when weltering in the clouds 

Of that eternity which comes in sleep. 

Or in the viewless spinning of the soul 

When most intense, 



THE LATER POETRY 473 

and ends with common brothel profanity. The popular method 
of justifying the Masters treatment is to gibe at the Robinson 
reticence as Puritan prudishness, but it is a gibe which for 
many enforces the value of reticence even in modern art. 

So much for the negative side of Mr. Masters's work — the 
so-called cynicism declaimed at by the inattentive reader and 
the preoccupation with sex which is fairly open to criticism. 
On the positive side the greater weight of his work lies in 
poems of searching analysis. " So We Grew Together " is 
the changing relations of an adopted son for his Bohemian 
father; "Excluded Middle," an inquiry into the mystery of 
inheritance ; " Dr. Scudder's Clinical Lecture," the study of 
a paranoiac — dramatic monologues suggestive of Browning in 
execution as well as content. The reader of Mr, Masters as 
a whole is bound to discover in the end that all these analyses 
are searchings into the mystery of life. It appears in " The 
Loom" as it does in "The Cry": 

There 's a voice in my heart that cries and cries for tears. 
It is not a voice, but a pain of many years. 
It is not a pain, but the rune of far-off spheres. 



Deep in darkness the bulb under mould and clod 
Feels the sun in the sky and pushes above the sod ; 
Perhaps this cry in my heart is nothing but God ! 

And he is bound to confess that Mr. Masters, instead of 
being a cynic, is a sober optimist. Take the last lines of the 
opening and closing poems in " Toward the Gulf " : 

And forever as long as the river flows toward the Gulf 

Ulysses reincarnate shall come 

To guard our places of sleep, 

Till East and West shall be one in the west of heaven and earth ! 

" And after that ? " 
" Another spring — that 's all I know myself, 
There shall be springs and springs 1 " 



474 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay (1879- ), born in Springfield, 
Illinois, of which he is the most devoted and distinguished 
citizen since Lincoln, studied for three years at Hiram College 
and then for five years as an art student in Chicago and New 
York. Unfortunately his drawings are accessible only in a 
quarto pamphlet — "A Letter to Program Managers" — which 
is not for sale. They show the same vigor and the same 
antic play of fancy inherent in his verse. In 1906 he took 
his first long tramp through Florida, Georgia, and the Caro- 
linas, and in 1908 a second through the northeastern states. 
During these two, as in his latest like excursion through the 
Western wheat belt, he traveled as a minstrel, observing the 
following rules : 

(i) Keep away from the cities. 

(2) Keep away from the railroads. 

(3) Have nothing to do with money. Carry no baggage. 

(4) Ask for dinner about quarter after eleven. 

(5) Ask for supper, lodging and breakfast about quarter of five. 

(6) Travel alone. 

(7) Be neat, truthful, civil and on the square. 

(8) Preach the Gospel of Beauty. 

These appeared at the head of a little pamphlet entitled 
" Rhymes to be Traded for Bread," the only baggage he car- 
ried besides a further printed statement called "The Gospel 
of Beauty." In smiling defense of his course Mr. Lindsay 
has said that up to date there has been no established method 
for implanting beauty in the heart of the average American. 
" Until such a way has been determined upon by a competent 
committee, I must be pardoned for taking my own course and 
trying any experiment I please." Mr. Lindsay has not limited 
himself to this way of circulating his ideas. He has posted 
his poems on billboards, recited them from soap boxes and 
on the vaudeville stage, and has even descended to select 
club audiences. He has, however, not allowed the calls of the 
lyceum managers to convert him from a poet to an entertainer. 



THE LATER POETRY 475 

His books have been six in number and, according to his 
own advice, are to be read in the following order : " A Handy 
Guide for Beggars," "Adventures while Preaching the Gospel 
of Beauty," " The Art of the Moving Picture," " General 
William Booth Enters into Heaven," " The Congo," and 
" The Chinese Nightingale." The first three are prose state- 
ments of his social and religious philosophy ; the second three 
are poems. His seventh volume is announced as "The Golden 
Book of Springfield." In its title it is a reaffirmation of what 
appears in many of his poems and of what he stated in " The 
Gospel of Beauty" (191 2): "The things most worth while 
are one's own hearth and neighborhood. We should make our 
own home and neighborhood the most democratic, the most 
beautiful, and the holiest in the world." 

The obvious first point about the poetry of Mr. Lindsay is 
that in it he lives up to his own instructions. He keeps quite 
as close to his own district as Mr. Masters and Mr. Frost do 
and he indulges in as wide a play of imagination as does 
Mr. Robinson. In the role of an apostle he tries to implant 
beauty in the heart of the average American. Yet " implant " 
is not the proper word ; his own word is " establish," for he re- 
enforces a latent sense of beauty in hearts that are unconscious 
of it and he reveals it in the lives of those whom the average 
American overlooks or despises. On the one hand, he carries 
whole audiences into an actual participation in his recitals and, 
on the other, he discloses the " scum of the earth " as poets 
and mystics. 

Thus " General William Booth Enters into Heaven " tells 
of Booth's apotheosis as it is seen and felt by a Salvation 
Army sympathizer. Booth with his big bass drum, followed by 
a motley slum crowd, leads to the most impressively magnifi- 
cent place within the ken of a small-town Middle Westerner. 
This is an Illinois courthouse square. As a matter of fact, it 
is bleak, treeless, dust-blown, mud-moated — the dome of the 
courthouse in the middle, flanked on all sides with ugly brick 



4/6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

blocks and alternating wooden shacks with corrugated iron 
false fronts ; but this is splendor to the mind of the narrator. 
And so in all reverence he says : 

(Sweet flute music) 

Jesus came from out the court-house door, 
Stretched his hands above the passing poor. 
Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there 
Round and round the mighty court-house square. 

From this scene General Booth ascends into heaven. " The 
Congo " is a similar piece of interpretation. Few types could 
seem more hopeless than the levee negroes, yet through them 
Mr. Lindsay makes a study of their race. In a drunken saloon 
crowd he sees the basic savagery which back in the Congo 
forests displays itself in picturesque poetry stuff. In a group 
of crapshooters who laugh down a police raid he finds the 
irrepressible high spirits which carry the negroes in imagina- 
tion back to a regal Congo Cakewalk, and in the exhorta- 
tions of an African evangelist he sees the same hope of 
religion which the slave brought with him from his native 
soil. Once again, " The Chinese Nightingale " is written in 
the same spirit, this time accounting for the Chinese laundry- 
man's tireless industry through the fact that while his iron 
pounds in the dead of night he is living in a world of 
oriental romance. 

Mr. Lindsay's poetry has two chief aspects, sometimes sep- 
arated, sometimes compounded. One of these is an ethical 
seriousness. He might be called an ideally provincial character. 
He chooses to express himself in terms of his home and 
neighborhood, but his interests move out through a series of 
concentric circles which include his city, his state, America, 
and the world federation. The poems on Springfield, therefore, 
are of a piece with the poems on " America Watching the 
War" and those on "America at War." "The Soul of the 
City," with Mr. Lindsay's own drawings, is quite as interesting 



THE LATER POETRY 477 

as any of the poems above mentioned. " Springfield Magical " 
suggests the source of his inspiration : 

In this, the City of my Discontent, 

Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass, 

" Romance, Romance — is here. No Hindu town 

Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass 

By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate ; 

No picture-palace in a picture-book 

Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate ! " 

" The Proud Farmer," " The Illinois Village," and " On the 
Building of Springfield" — three poems which conclude the 
General William Booth volume — are all on his favorite thesis 
and were favorites with his farmhouse auditors. 

His poems related to the war reveal him as an ardent demo- 
crat, a hater of tyranny, a peace-loving socialist, and, in the 
end, like millions of his countrymen, a combatant pacifist, but 
none the less a pacifist in the larger sense. A pair of stanzas, 
" Concerning Emperors," are a very pretty cue both to himself 
and his convictions. The first in fervent seriousness prays for 
new regicides ; the second states the case unsmilingly, but as 
it might be put to any newsboy, concluding : 

And yet I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand). 
Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand. 

This leads naturally to his verses of fancy and whimsy, like 
the group called the "Christmas Tree," ''loaded with pretty 
toys," or the twenty poems in which the moon is the chief 
figure of speech. And these lead naturally to his distinctive 
work in connection with poetic form, his fanciful and often 
whimsical experiments in restoring the half-chanted Greek 
choral odes to modern usage — what W. B. Yeats calls " the 
primitive singing of music " (expounding it charmingly in 
the volume " Ideas of Good and Evil"). Mr. Lindsay, in the 
" Congo " volume has indicated on some of the margins ways 
in which the verses might be chanted. Before many audiences 



478 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

he has illustrated his intent with awkwardly convincing effec- 
tiveness. And with the Poem Games, printed with "The 
Chinese Nightingale," he has actually enlisted unsuspecting 
audiences as choruses and sent them home thrilled and 
amused at their awakened poetic susceptibility. Mr. Lindsay's 
theories are briefly indicated in the two books just mentioned, 
in Miss Harriet Monroe's introduction to the former and in 
the poet's explanation of Poem Games in the latter. They 
are briefly stated and should be read by every student of his 
work. Like most of the developments in modern poetry they 
are very new only in being a revival of something very old, 
but in their application they are local, and they partake of 
their author's genial, informal, democratic nature in being very 
American. Among the contemporary poets who are likely to 
leave an individual impress on American literature, Mr. Lindsay, 
to use a good Americanism, is one of the few who " will 
certainly bear watching." 

Miss Amy Lowell (1874- ) was born in Brookline, 
Massachusetts. James Russell Lowell was a cousin of her 
grandfather, and she numbers among her relatives her mother's 
father, Abbott Lawrence, minister to England, and a brother, 
Abbott Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard. In her 
education general reading and wide travel were the most 
important factors. In 1902, at the age of twenty-eight, she 
decided to devote herself to poetry, and for the next eight 
years she studied and wrote without attempting publication. 
Her first verse was printed in the Atlantic Monthly in 1910, 
and her first volume, "A Dome of Many-Colored Glass," was 
published in 19 12. Her further volumes have been "Sword 
Blades and Poppy Seed " (19 14), " Six French Poets " (191 5), 
"Men, Women and Ghosts " (19 16), "Tendencies in Modern 
American Poetry " (1917), and " Can Grande's Castle " (1919), 
— in all, four volumes of verse and two of prose criticism. 
She has been a conspicuous personality among contemporary 
poets in France, England, and America, and though she has 



THE LATER POETRY 479 

not been lacking in self-assertiveness she has been without 
question chiefly interested in the progress of contemporary 
poetry and finely generous in both theory and practice in the 
support of her fellow-poets. 

As one of her most recent critics has pointed out, she has 
been notable and notably American in her zest for argument 
and in her love of experiment — "a female Roosevelt among 
the Parnassians." She has championed the cause of modern 
poetry and has fought the conventions of Victorian verse 
wherever she has encountered them, and in her liking for 
experiment and her absorption in technique she has taken 
up the cudgels successively for free verse, for the tenets of 
Imagism, and for polyphonic prose. She has been most 
closely identified with the activities of the Imagist poets, — ■ 
three Englishmen, two Anglicized Americans, and herself, — 
and it is therefore well to summarize the six objects to which 
they committed themselves : (i) to use the language of common 
speech, but to employ always the exact word, (2) to create new 
rhythms as the expression of new moods, (3) to allow absolute 
freedom in the choice of subject (within the limits of good 
taste), (4) to present an image (hence the name "' Imagist "), 
(5) to produce poetry that is hard and clear, (6) to insist on 
concentration as the essence of poetry. A stanza from " Before 
the Altar," the opening poem in her first book, serves to 
illustrate her technique as an Imagist : 

His sole condition 

Love and poverty. 

And while the moon 

Swings slow across the sky, 

Athwart a waving pine tree, 

And soon 

Tips all the needles there 

With silver sparkles, bitterly 

He gazes, while his soul 

Grows hard with thinking of the poorness of his dole. 



48o A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The fourth section of " Spring Day," the poem in " Men, 
Women and Ghosts " which begins with the much-discussed 
" Bath," is an example of her " polyphonic prose " : 

Midday and Afternoon 

Swirl of crowded streets. Shock and recoil of traffic. The stock- 
still brick facade of an old church, against which the waves of people 
lurch and withdraw. Flare of sunshine down side-streets. Eddies of 
light in the windows of chemists' shops, with their blue, gold, purple 
jars, darting colors far into the crowd. Loud bangs and tremors, 
murmurings out of high windows, whirring of machine belts, blurring 
of horses and motors. A quick spin and shudder of brakes on an 
electric car, and the jar of a church-bell knocking against the metal 
blue of the sky. I am a piece of the town, a bit of blown dust, thrust 
along with the crowd. Proud to feel the pavement under me, reeling 
with feet. Feet tripping, skipping, lagging, dragging, plodding 
doggedly or springing up and advancing on firm, elastic insteps. A 
boy is selling papers, I smell them clean and new from the press. 
They are fresh like the air, and pungent as tulips and narcissus. 

The blue sky pales to lemon, and great tongues of gold blind the 
shop-windows, putting out their contents in a flood of flame. 

In her essay on John Gould Fletcher, in " Tendencies in 
Modern American Poetry," Miss Lowell has defined the 
aesthetic intent of this poetic form: "'Polyphonic' means — 
many-voiced — and the form is so-called because it makes use 
of all the ' voices ' of poetry, namely : metre, vers libre, asso- 
nance, alliteration, rhyme and return. It employs every form 
of rhythm, even prose rhythm at times, but usually holds no 
particular one for long. . . . The rhymes may come at the 
ends of the cadences, or may appear in close juxtaposition to 
each other, or may be only distantly related." These two 
forms, with the aid of the two formulas, may be tested at 
leisure from an abundance of passages ; they correspond with 
their recipes, are distinct from each other, and have certain 
distinctive beauties. But a further experiment — the attempt 
to make the cadences of free verse harmonize with the move- 
ments of natural objects — is by no means so successful. "If 



THE LATER POETRY 481 

the reader will turn," says Miss Lowell, in the preface to 
"Men, Women and Ghosts," "to the poem 'A Roxbury 
Garden,' he will find in the first two sections an attempt to 
give the circular movement of a hoop bowling along the 
ground, and the up-and-down, elliptical curve of a flying 
shuttlecock." The following, presumably, is a segment of the 
circular movement : 

" I will beat you Minna," cries Stella, 
Hitting her hoop smartly with her stick. 
" Stella, Stella, we are winning," calls Minna, 
As her hoop curves round a bed of clove-pinks. 

It is an example, in fact, of the fruitlessness of dwelling on a 
matter of artistic form till it becomes more important than the 
artistic content. Miss Lowell admits in this connection that 
there flashed into her mind " the idea of using the movement 
of poetry." The student, therefore, should not regard the 
resultant verses as anything more than experiments in tech- 
nique, and at the same time he should speculate as to whether 
a vital artistic form can ever be imposed upon a subject 
instead of springing spontaneously from it. 

Yet, although Miss Lowell's reputation rests mainly on her 
experiments in novel and striking poetic forms, most of 
her work has been written in conformity with classic traditions. 
The opening volume is all in common rhythms, and so is most 
of the second, and quite half of the third. The last alone is 
devoted to a new form ; " Can Grande's Castle " contains four 
long poems in polyphonic prose. The tendency is clearly in 
the direction of the innovations, but thus far the balance 
is about even between the new and the old. 

As to subject matter, Miss Lowell's thesis is Poe's : that 
poetry should not teach either facts or morals, but should be 
dedicated to beauty ; it is a stained-glass window, a colored 
transparency. And the poet is a nonsocial being who 

spurns life's human friendships to profess 
Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstacy. 



482 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Like Poe she limits herself to the production of lyrics and 
tales and resorts not infrequently to grotesques and arabesques. 
Unlike Poe her resort to horror leads her to the composition 
of sex infidelities which are sometimes boring, sometimes foul, 
a;nd rarely interesting. On this point (rule three for the 
Imagists) Miss Lowell falters awkwardly. " * How can the 
choice of subject be absolutely unrestricted .? ' — horrified critics 
have asked. The only reply to such a question is that one 
had supposed one were speaking to people of common sense 
and intelligence." The bounds of taste are assumed ; yet 
these, she hastens to state, differ for different judges, and she 
illustrates her contention by the extreme extensiveness of her 
own. Finally, and again like Poe, Miss Lowell is to a high de- 
gree bookishly literary in her choice and treatment of subjects. 

After all, for the attentive reader of contemporary poetry 
Miss Lowell's most distinguished service has been in her two 
books of criticism. In the concourse of present-day poets she 
is a kind of drum major. One cannot see the procession 
without seeing her or admiring the skill with which she 
swings and tosses the baton. But when the parade is past, one 
can easily forget her until the trumpets blare again. She leads 
the way effectively, and one is glad to have her do it, — glad 
that there are those who enjoy being excellent drum majors. 
Then one pays farewell to" her in the words with which she 
salutes Ezra Pound in her verses headed '" Astigmatism " : 
" Peace be with you, [Sister]. You have chosen your part." 

Witter Bynner (1881- ) was born in Brooklyn and is 
a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1902. He took the 
impress of his university and recorded it not only in an " Ode 
to Harvard" (1907) — reprinted in "Young Harvard and 
Other Poems " — but also in the two plays that followed, 
"Tiger" (1913) and "The Little King" (1914), neither of 
which have anything to do with Harvard, but both of which 
reflect the intelligent interest in drama encouraged at that seat 
of learning. Aside from " Iphigenia in Tauris " (19 15), his 



J 



THE LATER POETRY 483 

remaining work, in which his real distinction Hes, is the single 
poem "The New World" (1915) and the collection " Gren- 
stone Poems" (19 17). Into both of these are woven threads 
of the same story, — the poet's love and marriage to Celia, 
the inspiration which comes to him from her finer nature, the 
birth and loss of their child, the death of Celia, his dull 
bereavement, the dedication of his life to the democracy which 
Celia had taught him to understand. 

" Grenstone Poems " is a series of little idyls comparable in 
some respects to Frost's "A Boy's Will." They are wholly in- 
dividual in tone, presenting in brief lyrics, nearly two hundred 
in number, the quaint and lovely elements in the humor and 
the tragedy of life. " The New World," in contrast, contains 
by implication much of this, but is constructed in nine sections 
which trace the progressive steps in the poet's idealization of 
America. Always Celia's imagination leads far in advance of 
his own. Again and again as he strives to follow, his triumphant 
ascent reaches as its climax what to her is a lower round in the 
ladder. Two passages suggest the theme in the abstract, though 
the beauty of the poem lies chiefly in the far implications of 
definite scenes and episodes. The first is a speech of Celia's : 

It is my faith that God is our own dream 

Of perfect understanding of the soul. 

It is my passion that, alike through me 

And every member of eternity, 

The source of God is sending the same stream. 

It is my peace that when my life is whole, 

God's life shall be completed and supreme. 

The second, with which this volume may well conclude, is in 
the poet's own words : 

In temporary pain 
The age is bearing a new breed 
Of men and women, patriots of the world 
And one another. Boundaries in vain. 
Birthrights and countries, would constrain 



484 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The old diversity of seed 
To be diversity of soul. 

O mighty patriots, maintain 
Your loyalty ! — till flags unfurled 
For battle shall arraign 
The traitors who unfurled them, shall remain 
And shine over an army with no slain, 
And men from every nation shall enroll 
And women — in the hardihood of peace ! 

What can my anger do but cease ? 
Whom shall I fight and who shall be my enemy 
When he is I and I am he ? 

Let me have done with that old God outside 
Who watched with preference and answered prayer, 
The Godhead that replied 
Now here, now there. 
Where heavy cannon were 
Or coins of gold ! 

Let me receive communion with all men, 
Acknowledging our one and only soul ! 

For not till then 
Can God be God, till we ourselves are whole. 



BOOK LIST 
General References 

The Younger American Poets. Jessie B. Rittenhouse, 1904. 

Tendencies in Modern American Poetry. Amy Lowell, 191 7. 

The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century. W. L. Phelps, 

191 8. (Latter half, American Poetry.) 
Convention and Revolt in Poetry. G. L. Lowes, 191 9. 
The New Era in American Poetry. L. Untermeyer, 1919. 

Collections 

A Little Book of Modern Verse. Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse. 
Some Imagist Poets (three annual volumes in a completed series), 

1915, 1916, 1917. 
An Anthology of Magazine Verse (annual volumes in a continuing 

series). Edited by W. S. Braithwaite, since 1915. 
The Poetry of the Future. Edited by W. T. Schnittkin. 
A Book of Princeton Verse. Edited by Alfred Noyes and Others. 



THE LATER POETRY 485 

Works of Individual Men 

Witter Bynner. Ode to Harvard, 1907; Tiger, 191 3; The Little 
King, 1 91 4; Iphigenia in Tauris, 191 5; The New World, 191 5; 
Grenstone Poems, 191 7; Any Girl, 191 7. 

Robert Frost. A Boy's Will, 1913; North of Boston, 1914; Moun- 
tain Interval, 191 6. 

Richard HovEY. Plays (uniform edition), 1 907-1 908. 

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay, General William Booth Enters into 
Heaven, 191 3; Adventures while Preaching the Gospel of Beauty, 
1 91 4; The Congo, 191 4; The Art of the Moving Picture, 1915; 
A Handy Guide for Beggars, 191 6; The Chinese Nightingale, 1917V. 

Amy Lowell. A Dome of Many-Colored Glass, 191 2; Sword Blades 
and Poppy Seed, 191 4; Six French Poets, 1915 ; Men, Women and 
Ghosts, 1 91 6; Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, 191 7; Can 
Grande's Castle, 1919- 

Edgar Lee Masters. Poems, 1898; Maximilian, 1900; The Spoon 
River Anthology, 191 5 ; Songs and Satires, 191 6; The Great Valley, 
1 91 6; Toward the Gulf, 191 8. 

William Vaughn Moody. Poems and Plays. 191 2. 2 vols. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson. The Children of the Night, 1897; 
Captain Craig, 1902 and 191 5; The Town down the River, 1910; 
The Man against the Sky, 191 6; Prose plays: Van Zorn, 191 4; 
The Porcupine, 191 5; Merlin, 1917. 

Magazine Articles 

The magazine articles on poetry are extremely numerous. From 
among those since 1900 the following are of special interest: 

1900-1904. Poetry and the Stage. H. W. Boynton. Atlantic, Vol. XCII 

pp. 120-126. July, 1903. 
Poetry of a Machine Age. G. S. Lee. Atlantic, Vol. LXXXV, 

pp. 756-763. June, 1900. 
1905-1909. Certain Vagaries of the Poets. Atlantic, Vol. C, pp. 431-432. 

September, 1907. 
On the Slopes of Parnassus. A. Repplier. Atlantic, Vol. CII, 

pp. 397-403. September, 1908. 
Our Strepitous Poets. Nation, Vol. LXXXV, pp. 277-278. 

Sept. 26, 1907. 
Poetry and Elocution. F. B. Gummere. Nation, Vol. LXXXIX, 

PP- 453-454- Nov. 11, 1909. 
State of Pseudo-Poetry at the Present Time. J. A. Macy. Book- 
man, Vol. XXVII, pp. 513-517. July, 1908. 
1910-1914. Democracy and Poetry. A^fl/zV;«,XCIII,pp.4i3-4M- Nov.2,1911. 
New Poetry. R. M. Alden. Nation, Vol. XCVI, pp. 386-387. 

April 17, 191 3. 



486 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

1910-1914. New Poets and Old Poetry. B. Hooker. Bookman, Vol. XXXI, 
pp. 480-486. July, 1910. 
Taking Poetry too Seriously. Nation, Vol. XCVI, pp. 173-174. 
Feb. 20, 1913. 

191 5. Imagism, Another View. W. S. Braithwaite. New Republic, 

Vol. Ill, pp. 154-155. June 12, 1915. 
Limits to Imagism. C. Aiken. New Republic, Vol. Ill, pp. 204- 

205. June 26, 191 5. 
New Movement in Poetry. O. W. Firkins. Nation, Vol. CI, 

pp. 458-461. Oct. 14, 1915. 
Place of Imagism. C. Aiken. New Reptiblic, Vol. Ill, pp. 75- 

76. May 22, 191 5. 

19 1 6. New Manner in Modern Poetry. A. Lowell. New Republic, 

Vol. VI, pp. 124-125. March 4, 1916. 
New Naivete. L. W. Smith. Atlantic, Vol. CXVII, pp. 487-492. 

April, 1 91 6. 
Poetry To-day. C. A. P. Comer. Atlantic, Vol. CXVII, pp. 493- 

498. April, 1916. 
Poetry under the Fire Test. J. N. Hall. New Republic, Vol. IX, 

pp. 93-96. Nov. 25, 1916. 

1917. From Florence Coates to Amy Lowell : a Glance at Modernity. 

O. W. Firkins. Natioji, Vol. CIV, pp. 522-524. May 3, 1917. 
Poetry, Education, and Slang. M. Eastman. New Republic, 

Vol. IX, pp. 151-152, 182-184. Dec. 9, 16, 1916. 
Singers and Satirists. O. W. Firkins. Nation, Vol. CIV, pp. 

157-158. Feb. 8, 1917. 
Critical Notes on American Poets. E. Garnett. Atlantic, Vol. 

CXX, pp. 366-373. Sept., 1917. 
See also the periodicals Poetry, a Magazine of Verse (see p. 497), 

as well as The Poetry Journal, The Poetry Review of America, 

and Poet Lore, entire. 



1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 192o| 


New York Evening Post, iSoi- 




















The Portfolio, 1806-1827 


















North American Review, 181^- 


















Saturday Evening' Post, 1821- 








1 












New York Mirror, 1823-1846 




















New York Review and Athenseui 
Casket, 1826-1840 


iMaga 


zine, 1826-182 














... 
















Godey's Lady's Book, iS^o-iSpS 


















New England Magazine, 1S31-18; 
Liberator, 1831-186? 


5 
































Baltimore Saturday Visiter, 1833- 
Western Monthly Magazine.^^Sa; 
Knickerbocker Magazine, iS^ij-ri 


? 
















-1836 
















6s 
















Southern Literary Messenger, i8j 


4-186^ 
















Western Messenger, i83'!-i84i 


















Gentleman's Magazine, 1837-18^^ 


















Democratic Review, 1837-1859 


















Dial (Boston;, 1840-1844 
Graham's Magazine, 1841-1859 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1841- 
New York Tribune, 1841- 
New Englander, 1843-1892 
Littell's Living Age, 1844- 
Broadway Journal, 1845 
Home Journal, 1847- 
Independent, 1848- 
Congregationalist, 1849- 
Harper's Magazine, 1850- 
Putnam's Magazine, 1853-1858, 1 
Russell's Magazine, 1857-1860 
Atlantic Monthly, 1857- 
Saturday Press, 1 858-1 860 
Round Table, 1 864-1869 
Every Saturday, 1865-1874 
Nation, 1865- 
Galaxy, 1866-1878 
Overland Monthly, 1868-1875, 18S3- 
Lippincott's Magazine, 1868-1916 
Scribner's Monthly, 1870-18S1 
Outlook, 1870- 

Southem Magazine, 1871-1875 
American Magazine, 1S75- 
Dial (Chicago-New York), 1880- 
Critic, 1881-1906 ■ 
Century Magazine, 1881- 
Scribner's Magazine, 1886- 
Poet-Lore, i8Sg- 
Conservator, 1890- 
Yale Review, 1S92- 
McClure's Magazine, 1893- 
Everybody's Magazine, 1S99- 
Poetry Magazine, 19 12- 
New Republic, 19 14- 


















































































































































































868-187 


0, 1906 


-i9io_ 














































































































































































































































































































































































































CHRONOLOGICAL CHART III. LEADING PERIODICALS ESTABLISHED SINCE 
1800 WHICH HAVE SERVED AS VEHICLES FOR AMERICAN WRITINGS 



INDEX TO LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY 
PERIODICALS 

The following list of periodicals represents a small fraction of those 
which were established and throve for longer or shorter periods in 
the United States between 1800 and the present time. The basis of 
selection has been to include only those which published a generous 
amount of literature which is still remembered or those of which 
leading men of letters were editors. 

It was intended at first to make the list identical with the periodicals 
mentioned in the text, but this proved not to be practical. On some 
of the earlier ones it was not possible to secure exact data concerning 
length of life, editors, and contributors. Some others mentioned in the 
text were not of importance enough to justify inclusion. Still others, 
though not mentioned in the text, were too important to be omitted. 
The list as it stands, therefore, represents the judgment of the author 
and would not coincide with that of any other compiler of a list of 
equal length. It will serve, however, as a fairly representative list 
and will, perhaps, move some other student of American literature 
to what is greatly needed — a relatively complete and compact 
" Who 's Who " of American periodicals. 

As yet such material is very meager and unsatisfactory. The great 
number of magazines and the bewildering consolidations, changes of 
editorship, title, form, period of publication, and place of publication 
have apparently discouraged anyone's attempting a definitive piece of 
work. On this account and with this explanation the following brief 
appendix has been prepared. 

American Magazine, The, 1875 . A New York monthly. 

Founded in 1875. From 1884 to 1888 the Brooklyn Magazine, then resumed 
its own name, continuing without important developments till it entered on its 
present regime in 1905. This came with the absorption of Leslie's and the as- 
sumption of control by Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and Ida Tarbell, 
all former staff writers for McClure's. In this latter period it has been specially 
487 



488 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

successful in recognizing younger authors. It has printed much by Bynner, 
O. Henry, Lindsay, Whitlock, and Poole; by Eaton and Hamilton on the 
drama; by F. P. Dunne ("Mr. Dooley"), George Ade, and Irvin Cobb; and, 
among foreign authors, by Wells, Bennett, Kipling, and Locke. It is popular 
in policy and content. 

Atlantic Monthly, The, 1857 . A Boston monthly. 

Founded in 1857, Francis H. Underwood the prime mover, with the inten- 
tion of setting new standards for a literary magazine of American authorship. 
Lowell was first editor ; the first notable essay series Holmes's " Autocrat of 
the Breakfast Table " ; the first popular serial story, Mrs. Stowe's " Dred." 
The field has been consistently divided among fiction, essay, and poetry, and 
the book reviewing has always been scrupulous. The editors have been 
Lowell, James T. Fields, W. D. Howells, T. B. Aldrich, Horace Scudder, 
W. H. Page, Bliss Perry, and the present editor and chief owner, Ellery 
Sedgwick. Early important contributors were Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow, 
Lowell, Thoreau, Whittier, Hawthorne, "Wendell Phillips. Later issues have 
included Lafcadio Hearn, Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, Agnes Repplier, 
Gerald Stanley Lee, S. M. Crothers, William Vaughn Moody, Richard Hovey, 
and most of the contributors to the best traditions in American literature. 
(See " The Atlantic Monthly and its Makers," by M. A. De Wolfe Howe.) 

Baltimore Saturday Visiter, 1833 (?). A Baltimore weekly. 

Started by Lambert A. Wilmer, who continued with it for only six months. 
In October of this year Poe's " MS. Found in a Bottle " was published as the 
winner of a prize competition. This was Poe's one contribution and the Visiter's 
sole apparent title to fame. 

Broadway Journal, 1845. A New York weekly. 

Founded by C. F. Briggs (" Harry Franco ") in January, 1845. So named 
according to the first editorial from "the first street in the first city of the 
New World. . . . We shall attempt to make it entirely original, and instead of 
the effete vapors of English magazines . . . give such thoughts as may be gen- 
erated among us." Poe and Briggs were associate editors in the spring, until 
in July, 1845, it went under the sole charge of Poe, who bought it from Briggs 
for $50. During this year it was Poe's chief vehicle, printing or reprinting 
some fifteen of his prose tales and two poems. Its business failure took place 
at the end of the first year. (See " Life of Poe," by George E. Woodberry.) 

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1841. A Brooklyn daily. 

Isaac Van Anden, first editor and publisher. A democratic newspaper with 
independent judgment. From 1844 (?) to 1848 Wah Whitman was its editor. 
From 1885, until his recent death, it was under charge of St. Clair McKelway, 
a brilliant writer and speaker and a constructive educator. 

Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (see Gentleman'' s Magazine). 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 489 

Casket, The {Graham's Magazine), 1 826-1 840. A Philadelphia monthly. 
Called Atkinson's Casket, 1831-1840. Was combined with Gentleman's 
Magazine and became Graham's Magazine. 

Century Magazine, The, 1881 . A New York monthly. 

A continuation of the older Scribnet's Monthly (1870-1881) on the assumption 
of control by Roswell Smith. R. W. Gilder was editor from the second number, 
till his death in 1907. Its policy was to publish articles, singly and in series, 
related to broad aspects of American life, exposition and poetry playing a larger 
part in the earlier years than of late. In travel it published Lowell's " Impres- 
sions of Spain " and van Dyke's " Sicily " ; in biography later portions of 
Hay and Nicolay's " Lincoln," Jefferson's autobiography, and a Napoleon series. 
Riis, Bryce, Darwin, Tolstoy, and Burroughs have contributed from their own 
fields. Notable fiction series have been contributed by Howells, Mark Twain, 
Crawford, Weir Mitchell, Garland, London, and Mrs. Wharton ; and verse by 
Emerson, Whitman, Gilder, Moody, Markham, and Cawein. (See also Scribner's 
Monthly, p. 499.) 

Congregationalist and Christian World, The, i 849 . A Boston 

weekly. 
Founded in 1816 as the Boston Recorder hy Nathaniel Willis, father of the 
more famous Nathaniel Parker Willis, and conducted by him until 1844. From 
then till about 1890 it was the sectarian organ of the Congregationalists, play- 
ing a r61e similar to that of the Independent and the Chf-istian Union. In the 
latter part of the nineteenth century it was under the editorship of W. A. Dun- 
ning, who was succeeded by the present editor, Horace Bridgman. It has had 
a consistent career as a religious weekly, changing with the times, but not modi- 
fying itself for the sake of a secular circulation so frankly as the other two 
have done. 

Conservator, The, 1890. A Philadelphia monthly. 

Founded in 1890 by Horace Traubel, an independent exponent of the world 
movement in ethics. In 1892 W. H. Ketler, Joseph Gilbert, W. Thornton 
Innes, and James A. Brown added to the editorial staff and enlarged to con- 
tain articles of timely interest, a book-review section, and a " Budget " for the 
reports of the ethical societies. The chief contributors : Stanton Coit, Wil- 
liam Salter, Robert Ingersoll, and M. M. Mangasarian. The magazine gradu- 
ally dropped its study of ethical questions and became an exponent of " the 
Whitman argument," treated by Bucke, Harned, Kennedy, Piatt, and Helena 
Born. In 1890 Traubel added extensive dramatic criticism and enlarged the 
book-review department. Since 1898 the magazine has been an expression of 
Traubel's radical theories. It contains a long editorial " Collect," which is an 
uncompromising criticism of the times, a long poem by Traubel, and reviews 
of current books of sociahstic tendencies. During the Great War it was 
frankly pacific, before the entrance of the United States. 



490 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Critic, The, 1881-1906. A New York bi-weekly (i 881-1882), weekly 
(1883-1898), and monthly. 

Founded as a " fortnightly review of literature, the fine arts, music, and the 
drama." The best known of its editors were the latest — J. L. and J. B. Gilder. 
After the first four years art and music notes were dropped and book reviews 
were made the leading feature, original essays giving place to extracts from 
other magazines. In 1900 the design was stated to be " an illustrated monthly 
review of literature, art, and life." From 1905 politics and technical science 
were dropped. In 1906 it was absorbed by Putnam's. Best-known contributors : 

E. C. Stedman, Edith M. Thomas, R. W. Gilder, John Burroughs, E. E. Hale, 

F. B. Sanborn, J. C. Harris, Brander Matthews. 

Democratic Review, The United States, i837-i859(?), A Washing- 
ton and New York quarterly. ^ 

A note in Vol. XXXVIII stated that with Vol. XXXIX it would be issued 
as a newspaper. At the outset it was the most successful political magazine in 
the country. It was characterized by Carlyle as "7%^ Dial with a beard." It 
was at first partisan, until, with payment for its articles, it became broader. 
Early contributors and best known were Orestes Augustus Brownson, Bancroft, 
Whittier, Bryant, and Hawthorne. 



J 



Dial, The, i 840-1 844. A Boston quarterly. 

Founded as a quarterly organ for the group of Transcendentalists centering 
about Emerson. Editors: 1840-1842, Margaret Fuller; 1842-1844, Emerson. 
The issues of 128 pages contained philosophical essays, discussions of German 
and oriental thought, comments on contemporary art and literature, book 
reviews, and poetry. The circulation never reached 300 copies, and at the 
end of the fourth year it was discontinued, the final debts being paid by Emer- 
son. Leading contributors were the editors : Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Theodore 
Parker, George Ripley, C. P. Cranch, J. F. Clarke, and Ellery Channing. There 
was a reprint by the Rowfant Club, Cleveland, in 1901-1902, with the addition 
of a historical and biographical introduction. (See introduction to the reprint 
of The Dial,Yo\. II, George Wilhs Cooke, 1902.) 

Dial, The, 1881 . A Chicago (1881-1918) and New York fortnightly. 

Founded and edited for a third of a century by Francis F. Browne as a 
literary review, and able to refer to itself on its thirtieth birthday as " the only 
journal in America given up to the criticism of current literature " and "the 
only literary periodical in the country not owned or controlled by a book pub- 
lishing house or a newspaper." After one or two changes of control, following 
the death of its founder, 77ie Dial was transferred to New York in July, 1918, 
extending its editorial policy to include, besides the literary features, discussions 
of internationalism and of industrial and educational reconstruction. 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 49 1 

Everybody's Magazine, 1899 . A New York monthly. 

Founded by John Wanamaker and for the first four years a miscellany best 
characterized by the purchasers in 1903. The Ridgway-Thayer Company on 
taking control announced their purpose to do away with the " mawkish, morbid, 
and unreal," to repress questionable advertising, and in general to transform 
the magazine. Since then Everybody's has attempted in content to satisfy all 
sorts of intellectual tastes and at the same time to have a hand in the social 
and economic investigation of the period. The most celebrated series, which 
multiplied the circulation, was Thomas W. Lawson's " Frenzied Finance." 
Literary contributors in recent years have included Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 
O. Henry, Frank Norris, Booth Tarkington, Ernest Poole, Dorothy Canfield, 
' and in poetry Margaret Widdemer, Witter Bynner, and others. 

Every Saturday, i 865-1 874. A Boston weekly. 

A Ticknor and Field publication; one of the numerous "eclectic" mid- 
century periodicals made up of selected materials chiefly from English maga- 
zines. It is of interest partly as a type and partly because Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich was editor for the nine years of its life. In 1874 it was merged with 
LitteWs Living Age (see p. 493). 

Galaxy, The, i 866-1 878. A New York monthly. 

"An illustrated magazine of entertaining reading." The first volume illus- 
trated the practice of the day in featuring English authors with a leading serial 
by Anthony Trollope. The American contributors include Bayard Taylor, 
Howells, Stedman, and William Winter. Later Charles Reade was accompanied 
by Henry James, John Burroughs, E. R. Sill, and Paul Hamilton Hayne. With 
contributors of this substantial secondary rank, later still supplemented by Sidney 
Lanier and Joaquin Miller, the Galaxy completed and died with its twelfth year. 

Gentleman's Magazine, Burton's (1837-1841). A Philadelphia monthly. 
Founded by William E. Burton, the actor. Poe was an early, important 
contributor and in the second year the editor. Although he and Burton sepa- 
rated in 1839, the proprietor saw to it that Poe was reemployed when in 1841 
George R. Graham bought out its circulation of 3500 and merged it with 
Atkinson's Casket as Graham's Magazine. 

Godey's Lady's Book, i 830-1 898. A Philadelphia monthly. 

Founded by Louis A. Godey, July, 1830, and managed by him as a monthly 
until 1877. In 1837 it absorbed the Boston Lady's Magazine and took over its 
editor, Sarah J. Hale. Its chief distinction and highest circulation (150,000) 
came under its first manager. It printed much early work of Longfellow, 
Holmes, Poe, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Sigourney, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. 
In its last years it was renamed Godey's Magazine. In 1898 it was absorbed by 
the Puritan. 



492 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Graham's Magazine, 1 841 -1 859. A Philadelphia monthly. 

Founded by George R. Graham by combining his Atkinson's Casket with his 
purchase of Burton's Gentleman'' s Magazine. Within a year, largely through 
Poe's editorial work, the circulation rose from 5000 to 30,000. By 1850 it had 
reached a circulation of 135,000. Among the later editors were R. W. Gris-; 
wold, Bayard Taylor, and Charles Godfrey Leland, and among the contributors, 
Cooper, Longfellow, Poe, Hawthorne, Lowell, N. P. Willis, E. P. Whipple, 
the Gary sisters, William Gilmore Simms, Richard Penn Smith, and Thomas 
Dunn English. In January, 1859, Graham's became the American Monthly 
(see "Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors," A. H. Smyth, 1892, and 
the Critic, Vol. XXV, p. 44). / 

Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1850^:- — . A New York monthly. 

Founded by Harper Brothers in order " to place within the reach of the 
great mass of the American people the unbounded treasures of the periodical 
literature of the present day "; thus it was an " eclectic " magazine, and in the 
early years it supplemented this borrowed magazine material with serials by 
the most popular English novelists. Within four years it had a circulation of 
125,000. During the i86o's it became more American in content, and in the 
1870's it included a notable series on the transformed South. In the last thirty 
years it has drawn on the best-known American authors for single articles and 
serials : Aldrich, Howells, Lowell, Wister, Mrs. Deland, Mark Twain, James, 
Harte, Mrs. Wharton, Tarkington, Allen ; and it has shared in the publication 
of recent significant poetry by Cawein, Le Gallienne, Untermeyer, Bynner, and 
the Misses Thomas, Teasdale, Widdemer, and Lowell. (See "The House of 
Harper," J. H. Harper, 191 2, and "The Making of a Great Magazine,"i 
Harper & Brothers, 1889.) 

Home Journal, The, i 847 . A New York monthly. 

Jointly founded and conducted by George P. Morris and N. P. Willis as a 
continuation of their National Press (founded 1845). Both remained with it 
till death — Willis, the survivor, till 1865. " It was and is," wrote H. A. Beers 
in his Life of N. P. Willis (1885), " the organ of ' japonicadom," the journal of 
society, and gazette of fashionable literature, addressing itself with assiduous 
gallantry to ' the ladies.' " 

Independent, The, 1848 . A New York weekly. 

. A periodical " Conducted by Pastors of Congregational Churches " ; Leonard 
Bacon, the first editor ; Reverend George B. Cheever and Reverend Henry Ward 
Beecher, contributing, editors. Its purpose was to be a progressive religious 
journal, particularly for Congregationalists, who protested against conserva- 
tism in theology and proslavery pohtics. Eventually it became an open forum 
for the liberally minded of all sects, being carefully nonpartisan in politics. 
From 1870 to 1890 it printed good verse, notably poems by Joaquin MiHer 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 493 

and Sidney Lanier. The religious and political viewpoints broadened out from 
1S73. . By 1898 an evident attempt was made to popularize the magazine. Since 
IQ14 it has absorbed the Chautauquan, the Countryside, and Harper's Weekly. 

Knickerbocker Magazine, The, i 833-1865. A New York monthly. 

The first editor was Charles Fenno Hoffman. From 1839 to 1841 Irving 
wrote monthly articles for a salary of $2000. Bryant, Whittier, Longfellow, 
Holmes, Halleck, and most of the secondary writers contributed. The second 
editor, from 1841 to 1861, was Lewis Gaylord Clark. In its later years the 
riiagazine dechned, chiefly because it was carrying the tradition of polite and 
aimless literature into Civil- War times. During its period it stood in the North 
for the same interests that its contemporary, the Southern Literary Messenger, 
did in the South (see "The Knickerbocker Gallery," 1855, ^nd Harper's 
Magazine, Vol. XLVIII, p. 587). 

Liberator, The, 1 83 1 -1 865. A Boston wreekly. 

The most famous and effective abolition journal, founded and edited 
throughout by William Lloyd Garrison. It was proscribed in the South and 
denounced in the North. Wendell Phillips and Henry Ward Beecher praised 
it, but Mrs. Stowe criticized and Horace Greeley misrepresented it. The 
financial straits it passed through were augmented by the rivalry of other 
abolition papers. After the Emancipation Proclamation and Lincoln's second 
Inaugural, announcement of discontinuance was made. The last issue appeared 
December 29, 1865. 

Lippincott's Magazine, i868-igi6. A Philadelphia monthly. 

One qLytsfirfaaglazines founded near 1870 — the others Scribner's Monthly 
and ih.&~Walaxy — that made an active market for American writers. Lippin- 
cotfs, " a magazine of literature, science, and education," made an unpreten- 
tious start and throughout its career published little prose of distinction. Its 
poetry, however, was excellent. Bayard Taylor and Paul Hamilton Hayne 
appeared in the first and following numbers. Margaret Preston, Emma Laza- 
rus, 'I'homas B. Read, George H. Boker, Thomas Dunn English, and Chris- 
topher P. Cranch contributed frequently. Whitman, rare in the magazines, 
wrote in prose, and, most important of all, Lanier found here a channel for 
much of his verse from 1875 °^- I^i later years a feature of many issues was a 
complete short novel. In \g\6 Lippincotf s was absorbed hy Scribner's Magazine. 

Littell's Living Age, 1844 . A Boston monthly. 

■ This is the longest-lived of the eclectic, or " scissors and paste-pot," maga- 
zines. It has been made up of reprints from foreign periodicals, sometimes 
quoting from English apparent soul-ces articles which had been borrowed 
.there from original American publications. In 1874 it absorbed Every Saturday 
(see p. 491) and in 1898 the JLclectic Magazine. It still survives. 



494 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

McClure's Magazine, i 893 , A New York monthly. 

S. S. McClure publisher and editor. Fiction and poetry have been the domi- 
nant features. Contributors (fiction) : Kipling, Stevenson, Arnold Bennett, 
Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Booth Tarkington, Robert Chambers, O. Henry, 
Jack London ; (verse) : Wordsworth, Browning, Walt Whitman (reprints), 
Kipling, Witter Bynner, Edgar Lee Masters, Hermann Hagedorn, Louis Unter- 
meyer. It was the first magazine to sell at the popular price of fifteen cents. 
The nonliterary articles on affairs of the day were prepared on assignment by 
expert writers such as Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, and Lincoln Steffens, 
years sometimes being spent on a single series. In 1905 these three assumed 
control of the American, but the policy has been continued to the present. 

Mirror, The New York, 1823-1846. A New York weekly. 

Founded by George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth (remembered re- 
spectively for " Woodman, Spare that Tree " and " The Old Oaken. Bucket"). 
In 1 83 1 the Mirror absorbed the Boston American Monthly together with its 
editor, Nathaniel Parker Willis. In the next year Willis wrote for it the first 
of his travel series, " Pencillings by the Way," continuing with weekly letters 
for four years. In 1839 Hawthorne became a contributor. In 1844- 184 5 Poe 
was subeditor and critic, his most famous contribution being " The Raven," 
January, 1845. I'^ ^^45 ^^ weekly became a daily — the Evening Mirror — 
and in 1846 it was discontinued. 

Nation, The, 1865 . A New York weekly. 

Publishers : Joseph H. Richards, 1865 ; Evening Post Publishing Co., 1871 ; 
E. L. Godkin Co., 1874; Evening Post, 1881 ; New York Evening Post, 1902 ; 
Nation Press, Inc., New York, 1915. Editors have changed frequently, the 
most famous being the first, E. L. Godkin, who was in the chair from 1865 to 
188 1. Oswald Garrison Villard, present editor. It has been devoted to dis- 
cussions of politics, art, and literature and to reviews of the leading books 
in these fields. Representative contributors have been Francis Parkman, 
T. R. Lounsbury, B. L. Gildersleeve, J. R. Lowell, Carl Schurz, James Bryce, 
William James, Paul Shorey, and Stuart Sherman. (See "Fifty Years of 
American Idealism," edited by Gustav Pollak. 191 5. Also the " Semicentenary 
Number," 1915.) 

New England Courant, The, i 721-1727. A Boston weekly. 

Founded by James Franklin and carried on by him and a group of friends 
known as the Hell- Fire Club. The Courant represents a violent and somewhat 
coarse reaction against the domination of the New England clergy. It was 
written after the manner of the Spectator with frequent paraphrased and a few 
quoted passages. After the imprisonment of James the paper was carried on 
by the youthful Benjamin Franklin, who had already contributed the fourteen 
" Do-Good Papers." The Courant gave evidence of much wit and enterprise, 
but quite lacked the urbanity of its English model. 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 495 

New England Magazine, The, i 831 -1835. A Boston monthly. 

Founded by Joseph T. Buckingham, former editor of the Polyanthus, 1805- 
1807 and 1812-1814, the Ordeal, 1809, the New England Galaxy, 1817-1828, and 
the Boston Courier, a daily, 18 14-1848. The New England Magazine, superior 
to any of these, was the project of Edwin, a son, who gave it distinction in a 
single year of editorship before his death, at the age of twenty-two. The father 
continued in charge for eighteen months, relinquishing it for the final year to 
Charles Fenno Hoffman and Park Benjamin. These latter took the magazine to 
New York in January, 1836, renaming it the American Monthly Magazine. The 
younger Buckingham showed enterprise in enlisting well-known contributors 
and acuteness in securing copy from Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, and Haw- 
thorne before they were widely known. It was in the New England that Holmes 
originated " The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table " in two numbers of 1832, 
reviving the theme in his first Atlantic series twenty-five years later ; and here 
also Hawthorne printed many stories now in "Twice-Told Tales" and " Mosses 
from an Old Manse." (See "The First New England Magazine and its Editor," 
by George Willis Cooke, New England Magazine (N. S.), March, 1897.) 

New York Evening Post, The, 1801 . A New York daily. 

A Federal paper at first. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay aided in its 
establishment. William Coleman, first editor. Bryant began to write for the 
Post in 1826. He was editor from 1829 to 1878. 

New York Review and Athenaeum Magazine, The, (.?)-i827. A New 
York monthly. 
A type of the short-lived magazine which rose and then combined with or 
absorbed others in a succession of changes. This was first the Review, then 
in March, 1826, it was merged with another periodical into the New York Lit- 
erary Gazette or American AthencBum, and a little later it combined with Parson's 
old paper, the United States Literary Gazette.^ to form the United States Review 
and Literary Gazette. It is mentioned because of Bryant's contributions and 
his editorship from 1826 until its discontinuation. 

New York Tribune, The, 1841 . A New York daily. 

Started by Horace Greeley as a reform newspaper in support of President 
Harrison. In 1847 Greeley enlisted the support of several of the Brook Farm 
group — George Ripley, Margaret Fuller, Charles A. Dana, and George Wil- 
liam Curtis — and secured as later contributors Carl Schurz, John Hay, Henry 
James, William Dean Howells, Bayard Taylor, Whitelaw Reid, E. C. Stedman, 
and others. The Tribune made much of its literary side, not only in book 
reviews and discussions of contemporary art and letters but in the inclusion 
of much significant verse. The Tribune was an important ally in securing the 
election of Lincoln and supporting his policies. It has continued to be one of 
the leading New York dailies, but its great days were concluded with the 
resignation of Greeley in 1872. 



496 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

New Republic, The, 191 4 . A New York weekly. 

A " journal of opinion " founded with the assistance of Mr. Willard Straight 
by Herbert Croly and associates. As its subtitle indicates, it is chiefly con- 
cerned with problems of national and international import, but, in addition to 
the articles by editors and contributors on affairs of the day, it includes papers 
on the art, music, and literature of the present and the recent past, occasional 
light essays, discriminating book reviews, and verse. Representative contribu- 
tors have been John Graham Brooks, John Dewey, William Hard, Elizabeth 
Shipley Sargent, Louis Untermeyer, Robert Frost, Edwin Arlington Robinson, 
and, from England, Norman Angell, H. M. Brailsford, and H. G. Wells. 

/ORTH American Review, The, 181 5 . A Boston and New York 
quarterly. 
Successor to the Boston Monthly Anthology, 1803— 181 1, being founded by 
an editor, William Tudor, and several contributors who had been members 
of the Anthology Club. After three years as a general literary bimonthly it 
became a quarterly review. Among early contributors, besides well-known 
leaders in political thinking, were George Ticknor, George Bancroft, Bryant, 
and Longfellow. Until the founding of the Atlantic it was the leading organ 
of conservative thought in New England. For the decade from 1864 it was 
under the joint editorship of James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton. 
Since 1878 it has been in New York, changing in editorship and periods of 
publication. It became settled as a monthly under George Harvey. The more 
purely literary American contributors of the last few years have been Howells, 
Mabie, Matthews, Woodberry, Miss Repplier, Miss Teasdale, Miss Lowell, 
Hagedorn, Robinson, Mackaye, and Ficke. (See North American, Vol. C, 
p. 315, and Vol. CCI.) 

Outlook, The, 1870 . A New York weekly. 

Founded in 1870 as the Christian Uniojt, an undenominational paper, by 
Henry Ward Beecher. In 1876 he shared his duties as editor with Lyman 
Abbott, present editor. In 1884 Hamilton Wright Mabie was added as asso- 
ciate editor. Title was changed to The Outlook in 1893. Mabie secured con- 
tributions from men like James Bryce and Edward Dowden, translations from 
the works of Daudet and Fran9ois Coppee. Recent American literary con- 
tributors : Ernest Poole, Vachel Lindsay, Cawein, Oppenheim. New political 
impetus came with contributions from Theodore Roosevelt, beginning 1909. 
The paper has had more or less of ecclesiastical character all along, but at 
present may be characterized as seeking to mold public opinion and interpret 
current events. One nuniber of each month is enlarged to contain special 
departments; called Illustrated Magazine Number from 1896 to 1905. . 

Pennsylvania Gazette, The, i 729-1 821. A Philadelphia weekly. . ',\ 

The new name and new periodical founded by Benjamin Franklin when he 

purchased Samuel Keimer's Universal Instructor '\a. October, 1729. The news 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 497 

element was slight and unreliable, but the literary, Addisonian essays gave the 
paper character at once. These gave way later to essays more distinctly pecul- 
iar to Franklin's own point of view and kind of humor. The book advertise- 
inents supplemented this essay material in contributing to the broader culture 
/_of the readers. After Franklin's personal withdrawal the traditions of the 
Gazette were continued. In 1765 Franklin sold out to his partner David Hall. 
With the death of his grandson, also David Hall, the paper passed into the 
hands of Atkinson and Alexander and was renamed \h& Saturday Evening 
Post (p. 498). 

Poetry, 1912 . A Chicago monthly. 

A magazine of verse. Harriet Monroe, editor. Ralph Fletcher Seymour Co., 
Chicago, publishers. Advisory committee : H. B. Fuller, Edith Wyatt, and 
H. C. Chatfield Taylor. It was guaranteed for five years by endowment fund 
and contained no advertisements at the beginning. It has been a vehicle 
for poetry from all parts of the world by poets with or without fame. Now 
it contains book-list awards, reviews, and poetry announcements and advertise- 
ments. The original staff is almost unchanged. It seems to be on a sound 
financial footing. 

Poor Richard's Almanac, i 733-1 748. 

Founded by Benjamin Franklin. Its chief feature was its inclusion in the 
reading matter of the proverbial sayings, the best of which were combined in 
" The Way to Wealth." It was characterized by a French critic of the day 
as " the first popular almanac which spoke the language of reason." It was 
conducted by Franklin until 1748. 

Port Folio, The, i 806-1 827. A Philadelphia weekly and monthly. 

Founded by Joseph Dennie as a weekly newspaper. From 1806 to 1809, 
though continuing as a weekly, it assumed the character of a literary maga- 
zine, and in the latter year became a monthly. Its most distinctive period was 
in the first eleven years before the death of Dennie. While he was editor 
the Port Folio was a vehicle of " polite letters." It was imitative in style and 
reminiscent in point of view, but it was wholesome in its honesty about Ameri- 
can matters and manners and exerted a strong and healthy influence. The 
best-known contributors were the editor, " Oliver Oldschool," John Quincy 
Adams, and Charles Brockden Brown. 

Putnam's, 1853-1858, 1868-1870, 1906-1910. A New York monthly. 

Publishers, G. P. Putnam and Co., New York. Putnam's Monthly Magazine 
of American literature, science, and art. Established by George P. Putnam 
with the assistance of George William Curtis and others. In 1857 merged into 
Emerson's United States Magazine, which was continued as Emerson's Magazine 
and Putnam's Monthly. Discontinued November, 1858. January, 1868'- 
November, 1870, Putnam's Monthly Magazine. Original papers on literature, 



498 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

science, art, and national interests. Merged into Scribnei's Monthly^ Decem- 
ber, 1870. October, 1906-March, 1910, reestablished and merged with the 
Critic, founded in 1881 ; issued by Messrs. Putnam since 1898. An illustrated 
monthly of literature, art, and life. Absorbed the Reader, March, 1908. Titles 
vary during this period. A large number of full-page and smaller illustrations. 
One serial running, small proportion of verse, special articles, comments, and 
criticisms on literature and the fine arts, science, travel, statesmanship. Alter- 
nating emphasis with successive issues on the different arts. Typical con- 
tributors and contributions, with illustrations concerning: Lafcadio Hearn, 
Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Stedman, Stoddard, Henry James, Long- 
fellow, Franklin, Margaret Deland, Maeterlinck, Thomas Edison, Binet, Corot, 
Helen Keller, Nazimova, Gladstone, the Bonapartes. Absorbed by the Atlantic 
Monthly, April, 1910. 

Round Table, The, i 864-1 869. A New York monthly. 

A literary journal founded in New York in emulation of Boston's Atlantic 
and supported with great interest by Aldrich, Stedman, Bayard Taylor, and 
their circle. It was suspended during parts of 1864-1865 and discontinued in 
July, 1869, in spite of the efforts to secure a subsidy for it from the wealthy 
men of New York. 

Russell's Magazine, 185 7-1 860. A Charleston monthly. 

Founded by John Russell, Charleston bookseller, with Paul Hamilton Hayne 
as editor. A monthly periodical for the literary group centering around Wil- 
liam Gilmore Simms. Contained fiction, sketches, addresses, reviews, and 
essays on various topics — political, historical, literary, artistic, scientific. 
These were mainly unsigned, but the leading contributors were Simms, 
Hayne, Timrod, James L. Petigru, John D. Bruns, and Basil Gildersleeve. 
With the approach of the Civil War it was discontinued March, i860. (Lives 
of P. H. Hayne and W. G. Simms. Three Notable Ante-Bellum Magazines of 
South Carolina, Sidney J. Cohen, University of South Carolina, Bulletin ^2.) 

Saturday Evening Post, The, 1821 . A Philadelphia weekly. 

A lineal descendant of Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette (see p. 496). It was 
given its present name in 1821 when Samuel C. Atkinson and Charles Alex- 
ander took control, Atkinson being the surviving partner of David Hall, 
grandson and namesake of Franklin's partner to whom the Gazette was sold in 
1765. In one hundred and eighty years the only interruption to consecutive 
issues was during the British occupation of Philadelphia. The Post of recent 
years has been one of the American weeklies of largest circulation. It con- 
tains fiction, up-to-date personalia, and brisk articles on the affairs of the 
moment. Its attitude toward thrift, industry, and the way to wealth is com- 
pletely consistent with the ethics of Franklin. It is conducted by the Curtis 
Publishing Company and edited by George H. Lorimer. 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 499 

Saturday Press, The, i 858-1 860. A New York weekly. 

The special organ of the " Bohemians " — a group of New Yorkers who ac- 
knowledged Henry M. Clapp as their leader. Other contributors were Fitz- 
James O'Brien, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, R. H. Stoddard, William Winter, and 
E. C. Stedman, The Press was brilliant but short-lived, announcing in its last 
number in early i860 that it was "discontinued for lack of funds which [was], by 
a coincidence, precisely the reason for which it was started." (See H. M. Clapp 
in Winter's " Other Days," and " The Life of Stedman," by Stedman and Gould.) 

Scribner's Magazine, 1886 . A New York monthly. 

Founded December, 1886, by Messrs. Scribner (entirely distinct from old 
Scribner's Monthly)., with E. L. Burlingame as editor. Illustrated. Typical 
contributors, in the early years : H. C. Bunner, Joel Chandler Harris, Sarah 
Orne Jewett, Barrett Wendell, E. H. Blashford, Richard Henry Stoddard, 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, T. W. Higginson, W. C. Brownell, Charles Edwin 
Markham, Robert Louis Stevenson ; in recent years : Winston Churchill, 
J. L. Laughlin, W. C. Brownell, Meredith Nicholson, John Galsworthy, etc. 
Articles of popular interest on art, music, nature, travel, and since 191 4 a 
section given to the World War. Aim and policy unchanged. 

Scribner's Monthly, i 870-1 881. A New York monthly. 

Founded by Roswell Smith, manager, and J. G. Holland, editor, and published 
as Scribner's, but not like Harper's as a publishing-house magazine. The design 
from the first was to deal with matters of social and religious opinion from 
the liberal viewpoint. At the outset it absorbed Hours at Home and Putnam's 
and in 1873 Edward Everett Hale's Old and New. It was the first to under- 
take a series on the new South and to encourage Southern contributors, in- 
cluding Lanier, Thomas Nelson Page, George W. Cable, and Joel Chandler 
Harris. Most notable among its series were portions of Grant's Memoirs and 
Hay and Nicolay's " Life of Lincoln," George Kennan's Siberian papers, and 
Hay's anonymous novel " The Breadwinners." Scribner's Monthly vfzs a pioneer 
in the use of illustrations made by the new mechanical methods of reproduc- 
tion. The magazine never printed or sold less than 40,000 copies, and when 
in 188 1 it changed ownership and became the Century it had a circulation of 
j 125,000. (See Tassin's " The Magazine in America," pp. 287-301.) 

I Southern Literary Messenger, i 834-1 865. A Richmond monthly. 

Founded at Richmond, Virginia, in August, 1834, by Thomas W. White, as 
a semimonthly, but changed to a monthly almost at once. Poe contributed to the 
seventh number and from then on in each number till he became assistant 
editor from July, 1835, to January, 1837. During this period the circulation 
increased from 700 to 5000. Well established by this time, it continued as the 
most substantial and longest lived of the Southern magazines. A vehicle for 
literature between the too heavy and the frivolous, and an honest review. 



J 






SOO A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 

Poe's contributions outrank those of any other writer, but the list of contribu- 
tors includes N. P. Willis, C. F. Hoffman, R. W. Griswold, J. G. Holland, 
R. H. Stoddard, W. M. Thackeray, Charles Dickens, G. P. R. James, John 
Randolph, R. H. Bird, Philip P. Cooke, J. W. Legare, P. H. Hayne, Henry 
Timrod, John P. Kennedy, and Sidney Lanier. (See " The Southern Literary 
Messenger," by B. B. Minor.) 

Southern Magazine, The, i 871 -1875. A Baltimore monthly. 

The most distinguished of the several short-lived Southern magazines es- 
tablished in the Civil War reconstruction period. It was a continuation of the 
New Eclectic^ but included, in addition to the English reprints, original work 
by many Southern authors. These were, among others, Margaret Preston, 
Malcolm Johnson, Sidney Lanier, Paul Hamilton Hayne, and Professors Gil- 
dersleeve and Price. It could pay nothing for manuscript, however, and the 
new interest in Southern writing awakened by Scribner's in 1873, and responded 
to by Harper's, the Atlantic, Lippincoti's, the Independent, and others, furnished 
support as well as stimulation to its best contributors and hastened its death 
at the end of five years. 

Western Messenger, The (Cincinnati), 1 835-1 841. 

Begun by Reverend Ephraim Peabody. Published by Western Unitarian 
Society aided by American Unitarian Association. Purposed to make it a 
ehicle for clear, rational discussion of important and interesting topics. Dis- 
cussed reform movements, reHgious questions and creeds, and encouraged 
expression of all cultural ideas, — literary articles, poetry, book reviews, etc. 
Contributors : Mann Butler, W. D. Gallagher, James H. Perkins, R. W. Emer- 
son, J. S. Dwight, Elizabeth P. Peabody, Jones Very, James Freeman Clarke, 
Dr. Lyman Beecher, Professor Calvin E. Stowe, Margaret Fuller, C. P. Cranch. 
Sought to make it Western in spirit with many Western contributors and articles 
on history of the West. 1836-1839 in Louisville, under J. F. Clarke, then back 
to Cincinnati, under William H. Channing, till April, 1841. 

Western Monthly Magazine, The (Cincinnati), 1 833-1 836. 

Edited for two and one-half years by James Hall and for six months by 
Joseph R. Foy. Thirty-seven contributors, of whom six were women and only 
three from east of the AUeghenies. Harriet Beecher won " the prize tale " in 
April, 1834, and contributed another story in July. The contents made up 
largely of expository articles on art, history, biology, travel, education, 
economics, and modern sociology. The book notices were independent 
and discriminating. 

Yale Review, The, 1 892-1 91 1, 1 911 -. Issued quarterly. 

Continued New Englander and Yale Review. G. P. Fisher and others, edi- 
tors. In 1900 changed from a " journal of history and political science " to a 
"Journal for the Scientific Discussion of Economic, Political, and Social 



LEADING NINETEENTH-CENTURY PERIODICALS 501 

Questions"; 191 1 "a quarterly magazine devoted to Literature, Science, 

History, and Public Opinion." Yale Publishing Association, Inc., Wilbur D. 
Cross, chief editor. Not an official pubHcation of Yale University. Made up 
of serious articles and essays, some light essays and verse, and literary criti- 
cism. Leading contributors, prose : W. H. Taft, Norman Angell, Walter 
Lippman, Simeon Strunsky, Vida D. Scudder ; verse : Witter Bynner, Louis 
Untermeyer, Sara Teasdale, Edgar Lee Masters, Robert Frost, John Masefield. 
Thus its place as a literary periodical has been assumed only within the last 
decade. The old New Englander (1843-1892) was a substantial and dignified 
journal but included the work of no writer of even minor literary achievement. 



INDEX 



"Abraham Davenport" (Whittier), 

261 
"Acknowledgment" (Lanier), 355, 

356 
Adams, John, 68, 69, 343 
Addison, Joseph, 45, 47, 48, 102, 116, 

123, 163, 166, 191, 254, 317, 343 
"Adios" (Miller), 407 
Agassiz, Louis, 229, 294 
"Agile Sonneteer, The" (Sill), 401 
"Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor 

Poems" (Poe), 176 
Alcott, Bronson, 195, 196 
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 324, 327-331, 

332,411,453 
"Alectryon" (Stedman), 333 
" Algerine Captive, The " (Tyler), 103 
Allan, John, 174, 175, 176, 179 
AUston, Washington, 313 
Almanacs, colonial, 50, 51 
"American Anthology, An" (Sted- 
man), 332 
American Anti-Slavery Society, 257, 

258 
"American Claimant, The" (Twain), 

383 

American deference to Old World 
culture, 70, 78, 79,94, 108, 111-114, 
120, 121, 133, 142, 143, 152, 153, 154, 
163, 168, 177, 190, 201, 204, 268, 272, 
292, 333. 336, 367. 389. 419. 433. 438 

American isolation, iii 

" American Literature, Library of " 
(Stedman), 332 

American Magazine, The, 487 

American Manufacturer, The, 255 

American Monthly Magazine, The, 239 

" American Notebooks " (Hawthorne), 
241 

" American Register, The " (Brown), 
102 

"American Scholar, The" (Emerson), 
204 

"American, The" (James), 423 

Ames, Nathaniel, 50, 51 

Amesbury (Mass.), 253 



"Among my Books" (Lowell), 289 

"Among the Redwoods" (Sill), 399 

Andover (Mass.). 22, 304 

"Andre " (Dunlap), 96 

Andros, Governor, 27 

"Annabel Lee" (Poe), 179 

"Annie Kilburn " (Howells), 419 

"Antiquity of Freedom, The" 
(Whittier), 166 

"April Hopes" (Howells), 418 

Arcturus, 283 

Arnold, Matthew, 213, 216 

"Arrow and the Song, The" (Long- 
fellow), 272 

"Arthur Mervyn " (Brown), 105, 106 

Atlantic Monthly, The, 232, 265, 267, 
288, 305, 314, 317. 327. 329. 345. 381, 
397,415,416,478,488 

Austen, Jane, 107, 249 

"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
The" (Holmes), 316-318 

"Autumn" (Thoreau), 230 

"Awkward Age, The" (James), 423 

Bakst, Leon, 184 

" Ballad of Babie Bell, The " (Aldrich), 
330 • 

" Ballad of the Oysterman, The " 
(Holmes), 315 

"Ballads and other Poems" (Long- 
fellow), 271 

Baltimore Saturday Visiter, The, 176, 
488 

"Barbara Frietchie" (Whittier), 260 

Barlow, Joel, 65, 76, 86, iii 

" Baroness of New York, The " 
(Miller), 404, 406 

"Battlefield, The" (Whittier), 166 

"Bay Psalm Book," 5, 19, 21 

" Beat ! Beat ! Drums ! " (Whitman), 366 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 92 

"Bee, The" (Lanier), 354 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 299 

"Bells, The" (Poe), 179, 183 

" Bells : a Collection of Chimes, The " 
(Aldrich), 330 



503 



504 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Bennett, James Gordon, 385 

Bierce, Ambrose, 187 

" Biglow Papers " (Lowell), 284, 285, 

286 
"Bill and Joe" (Holmes), 320 
Bird, Robert M., 93, 97 
"Black Cat, The" (Poe), 186 
Blake, William, 182 
"Blithedale Romance, The," (Haw- 
thorne), 241, 244, 245 
Bohemia, 328, 335, 345, 363 
Boker, George H., 93 
Book Lists, 13, 24, 37, 57, 58, 67, 

84-87, 98, 108, 137-139, 155, 156, 

171, 188, 197, 218, 233, 249, 265,279, 

296, 308, 321, 340, 358, 377, 393, 

408, 434, 451. 484 
Boston, 5, 8, 28, 34, 42, 50, 77, 91, 173, 

199, 240, 252, 261, 267, 306, 307, 310, 

332, 343, 416 
Boston Miscellany, The, 283 
Boucicault, Dion, 437 
Bowdoin College, 238, 268, 301, 325 
"Bracebridge Hall" (Irving), 117, 

417 
Brackenridge, H. H., 97, 103 
Bradford, William, 7, 8 
Bradstreet, Anne, 21-26, 83, 301 
Bradstreet, Simon, 21 
"Brahma" (Emerson), 214 
"Bravo, The" (Cooper), 153 
Bridge, Horatio, 240 
"Bridge, The" (Longfellow), 272 
Broadway Journal, The, 178,488 
" Broker of Bogota, The " (Bird), 97 
Brook Farm, 196, 197, 240 
Brooklyn Daily Eagle, The, 363, 488 
" Broomstick Train, The " (Holmes), 

320 
" Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister 

Caroline" (Holmes), 319 
Brown, Charles Brockden, 100-109, 

412 
Brown, John, "of Harper's Ferry," 

232 
Brownell, Henry Howard, 331 
Browning, Robert, 261, 358 
"Brutus" (Payne), 97 
Bryant, William CuUen, no, 158-171, 

190, 191, 269, 277, 292, 324, 325, 

357,414 
Buffalo Express, The, 384 
Bunyafn, John, 47, 274 
Burke, Edmund, 58 



Burns, Robert, 255, 256, 262, 264 
Burroughs, John, 229, 364, 375 
Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, 177, 

491 
Bynner, Witter, 453, 482-484 
Byron, Lord, 175, 256, 370, 405, 406 

Cable, George W., 412, 424, 425 
California, 380, 381, 383, 396, 397, 

398, 399. 400, 403, 406 
Cambridge, England, 10 - 
Cambridge (Mass.), 50, 211, 267, 282, 

310,397 
Campbell, Thomas, 316, 317 
Carlyle, Thomas, 191, 202, 228, 253, 

275. 364 
"Cask of Amontillado, The" (Poe), 

179, 182, 183, 186 
"Cassandra Southwick" (Whittier), 

261 
"Celestial Pilot, The" (Longfellow), 

271 
Century, The, 336, 489 
Century Club, 170 
"ChamberedNautiluSjThe "(Holmes), 

319 
Channing, William EUery, 229, 231 
Charles I, 47 
Charles II, 30 

"Charles II " (Payne-Irving), 97 
Charleston (S. C), 45, 77, 89, 91, 344, 

345 
"Charlotte" (Rowson), 103 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 22 
Chesterfield, Lord, 53, 95 
Chesterton, Gilbert, 187 
"Christmas in California" (Sill), 399 
"Christus: a Mystery" (Longfellow), 

274, 278 
Chronological charts, 90 
Church of England, 10, 27, 33 
Churchill, Winston, 420, 431, 432 
Cincinnati, 300 
Citizen of the World, 116 
Civil War, 73, 94, 168 
Cl'emm, Virginia, 179 
" Clocks of GnosterTown,The "(Sill), 

398 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 191, 202, 

405 
Collins, Wilkie, 187 
Colonizatioii, 4, 5, 61, 66 
Columbia University (Oregon), 402 
"Columbiad, The" (Barlow), 76 



INDEX 



505 



"Comet, The" (Holmes), 315 
"Commemoration Ode" (Lowell), 

289, 294 
"Compensation" (Emerson), 212 
" Concord Centennial, The " (Lowell), 

289 
"Concord Hymn, The" (Emerson), 

214 
Conservator, The, 489 
Concord (Mass.), 191, 192-194, 202, 

210, 221, 236, 245, 267, 282, 283, 332 
Congregationalist and Christian World, 

489 
"Conqueror Worm, The" (Poe), 185 
"Conquest of Granada" (Irving), 117 
Consular service, 118, 241, 416 
"Contentment" (Holmes), 320 
"Contrast, The " (Tyler), 91, 94-96 
"Conversations on some of the Old 

Poets" (Lowell), 283 
"Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique, 

The" (Longfellow), 271 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 6, 75, 94, 

108, no, 130, 141-157, 170, 190, 

200, 269, 292 
"Corn" (Lanier), 354 
"Cotton Boll, The" (Timrod), 346 
Cotton, Reverend John, 1 1 
Craig, Gordon, 184 
Crawford, F. Marion, 424, 426 
"Credo" (Gilder), 340 
Crevecoeur, M. G. St. J., 59-68, 69, 83, 

227, 229 
"Crisis, The" (Churchill), 259, 427 
Critic, The, 490 
"Croaker Papers" (Halleck and 

Drake), 134, 314 
"Culprit Fay, The" (Drake), 135- 

136, 181 

"Daily Trials" (Holmes), 315 

Dante, 267, 271, 277 

Dartmouth College, 312 

"Dawn " (Gilder), 337 

" Day is Done, The " (Longfellow), 

272 
" Day of Doom, The " (Wigglesworth), 

i'8-2i, 51,83 
"Deacon's Masterpiece^ The" 

(Holrries), 305, 315, 318, 320 
"Death of Slavery, The " (Bryant), 

168 
"Deerslayer, The" (Cooper), 144 
Deland, Margaret, 307, 428, 430 



" Demagogue, The " (Gilder), 338 

Democracy, 27, 65, 116 

"Democracy" (Lowell), 293 

Democratic Review, The, 362, 490 

Defoe, Daniel, 47 

"Departure of the Pilot, The " (Sill), 
399 

De Quincey, Thomas, 202, 415 

"Destiny" (Aldrich), 331 

Detective story, the, 186 

Dial, The (Boston), 195, 196, 314, 345 

Dial, The (Chicago), 490 

Dickens, Charles, 119, 186, 381, 416, 
418 

Diction, literary, lo-ii, 49, 81, 106, 
119, 130, 131, 212, 263, 370,400, 406 

Diplomatic service, 117, 118, 290 

"Divinity School Address" (Emer- 
son), 206 

"Doctor Grimshaw's Secret" (Haw- 
thorne), 241 

"Dolliver Romance, The" (Haw- 
thorne), 241 

"Domestic Life" (Emerson), 223 

"Dorothy Q." (Holmes), 320 

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 187 

Drake, Joseph Rodman, 134-136, 164, 
176 

Drama, 89-99, 338' 344, 437-452 

Dramatic producers, 91, 96, 437, 443- 
444 

"Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal 
Swamp " (Stowe), 305 

" Drum-Taps " (Whitman), 365 

Dryden, John, 78 

Dunlap, William, 91, 96, 100, 437, 439 

Dwight, James S., 313 

Dwight, Timothy, 65, 75, 85, 103, in 

"Earth" (Bryant), 168 
"Earth Song" (Emerson), 253 
"Edgar Huntly " (Brown), 106 
Edinbtirgh Review, The, 1 19 
Edwards, Jonathan, 41, 43, 56, 102, 

103 
Egan, Pierce, 95, 103 
Eliot, George, 307, 416 
Elizabeth, Queen, 2, 4, 24 
"Elsie Venner" (Holmes), 312, 315 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 60, 136, 190, 
191, 195, 196, 199-220, 22ij 222, 
223, 225, 227, 229, 230, 232, 236, 252, 
279, 287, 288, 293, 311, 339, 340, 
364, 369. 375, 453 



5o6 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



"Emigrants, The" (Imlay), 103 
English recognition of American 

authors, 107, 11 1, 118, 119, 150 
" Essay for the recording of Illustrious 

Providences, An" (I. Mather), 29, 

30.31 
"Essays to Do Good" (C. Mather), 

47 
"Ethiopia Saluting the Colors" 

(Whitman), 368 
" Ethnogenesis " (Timrod), 346 
European travel, 115, 132, 151, 202, 

241, 268, 269, 286, 383, 389 
"Evangeline " (Longfellow), 273, 274, 

276 
Evelyn, John, 33 
Evening Mirror, The, 178, 327 
Every Saturday, 327, 328, 491 
Everybody's Magazine, 491 
"Excelsior" (Longfellow), 271 
"Eye of a Needle, The " (Howells), 

419 

"Fable for Critics, A" (Lowell), 151, 

284, 285 
" Fall of the House of Usher, The " 

(Poe), 182 
" Familiar Portraits " (Stevenson), 228 
"Fanny" (Halleck), 134, 135, 334 
"Fanshawe" (Hawthorne), 239 
"Farewell to Agassiz" (Holmes), 320 
"Fashion" (Mowatt), 95 
" Fearful Responsibility, A"(Howells), 

417 
Fielding, Henry, 415, 418 
Fields, James T., 238, 241, 288, 328, 

333 
Fitch, Clyde, 438, 439, 440, 444 
"Five Lives" (Sill), 400 
"Flood of Years, The" (Bryant), 169 
"Fool's Errand, A" (Tourgee), 348 
" Force " (Sill), 400 
" Foregone Conclusion, A " (Howells), 

417 
" Franklin, Autobiography of," 49, 50, 

SI. 52-55 
Franklin, Benjamin, 43-57, 69, 83, 

254. 387 
" Freedom of the Will " (Edwards), 42 
Freneau, Philip, 69, 72-82, 83, 85, 100, 

163,168,261 
" Fringed Gentian, The " (Bryant), 162 
Frost, Robert, 453, 466-469 
Fuller, Margaret, 195, 196 



Garland, Hamlin, 412, 429-430, 441 

Galaxy, The, 491 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 254, 255, 

256, 302 
"Garrison of Cape Ann" (Whittier), 

261 
George III, 66 
German influence, 97, 127, 191, 271, 

272 
"Gilded Age, The" (Twain and 

Warner), 382 
Gilder, Richard Watson, 324, 336-340 
Gilman, President Daniel C. 397 
Godey's Lady's Book, 178, 180, 491 
Godfrey, Thomas, 91, 92, 96 
Godwin, William, loi, 104, 105, 106, 107 
"Gold Bug, The" (Poe), 178, 186 
"Golden Legend, The " (Longfellow), 

274 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 116, 123, 163, 191, 

249, 262, 268, 316, 317, 416, 441 
Goodrich, S. G., 239 
" Good Shepherd, The " (Longfellow), 

271 
Gothic romance, 104, 107 
Graham's Magazine, 178, 283, 492 
" Grandissimes, The " (Cable), 425 
"Grave, The" (Longfellow), 271 
Greeley, Horace, 325, 328, 385 
"Greenfield Hill" (Dwight), 75 
" Guardian Angel, The " ( Holmes), 313 
"Gulliver's Travels," 122, 274 

" Hail Columbia," 96 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 113, 133-137, 

181, 324, 325, 328, 330, 334 
"Hampton Beach" (Whittier), 261 
" Happiest Land, The " (Longfellow), 

271 
Hardy, Thomas, 187 
Harper's Magazine, 419, 492 
Harris, Joel Chandler, 412, 424, 425 
Harte, Bret, 49 (note), 151, 380, 381, 

411,412,415 
Hartford (Conn.), 261, 299, 305, 332, 

384 
Harvard College, 28, 29, 33, 42, 200, 

204, 206, 207, 221, 268, 269, 270, 

280, 287, 310, 312, 315, 325, 327 
Haverhill, 252, 253, 332 
Haverhill Gazette, The, 255, 256 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 36, 108, 118, 

190, 191, 196, 200, 236-251, 252, 

411,412 



INDEX 



507 



Hay, John, 118, 431 

Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 347-349, 350 

"Hazard of New Fortunes, A" 

(Howells), 419 
"Headsman, The" (Cooper), 153 
"Heartsease and Rue" (Lowell), 291 
"Heidenmauer, The" (Cooper), 153 
"Her Explanation" (Sill), 400 
"Heredity" (Aldrich), 331 
"Hermitage, The" (Sill), 397, 398, 

400 
"Heroic Age, The " (Gilder), 338 
" Hiawatha, The Song of " (Longfel- 
low), 273, 275, 276, 364, 369 
Histories, American, 7, 29, 32 
"History of the Life and Voyages 

of Christopher Columbus, The " 

(Irving), 117 
"History of PHmouth Plantation, A" 

(Bradford), 7 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 170, 190, 

228, 252, 267, 310-323, 325, 328, 

329, 333, 412, 431 
"Home Acres" (Gilder), 337 
"Home as Found" (Cooper), 75, 153, 

190 
Home Journal, The, 492 
"Homeward Bound" (Cooper), 153, 

190 
Hopkinson, Francis, 68, 69, 70, 84, 92 
Hopkinson, Joseph, 96 
Hours at Home, 336 
"House of the Seven Gables " (Haw- 
thorne), 241, 242, 245, 246 
Hovey, Richard, 93, 444, 445, 454-457 
"How Love Looked for Hell" 

(Lanier), 355 
" How to Tell a Story " (Twain), 386 
Howard, Bronson, 437 
Howe, Julia Ward, 93 
Howells, William Dean, 49 (note), 118, 

249, 293, 328, 339, 384, 393, 413-422, 

427 
"Hugh Wynne" (Mitchell), 426 
"Hymn of the City" (Bryant), 165 
"Hymn to Death" (Bryant), i6i 
"Hyperion" (Longfellow), 270 

"I'll not Confer with Sorrow" (Aid- 
rich), 331 

"Image of God, The" (Longfellow), 
271 

Imagists, 231, 479 

Imlay, G., 103 



Immigration to America, 61 

" Imp of the Perverse, The " (Poe), 185 

"In Helena's Garden" (Gilder), 337 

"In School Days" (Whittier), 261 

"In Times of Peace " (Gilder), 338 

"In War Time" (Stedman), 333 

Independent, The, 492 

" Indian Burying-Ground, The " 

(Freneau), 80 
Indians, 8, 66, 93, 94, 143, 144, 146 
"Innocents Abroad, The" (Twain), 

- 383, 388 
"Inside of the Cup, The " (Churchill), 

420, 431 
International copyright, 119, 139, 

302 (note) 
Internationalism, 56 
"Iron Woman, The" (Deland), 307 
Irving, Washington, 6, 1 15-133, 170, 

190, 249, 269, 292, 324, 325, 385, 

411,416 
"Isles of the Amazons" (Miller), 404 
"Italian Journeys" (Howells), 417 
" Italian Notebooks " (Hawthorne), 

241 

James I, 30 
James II, 47 

James, Henry, 417, 418, 422-424 
James, William, 372 
"Janice Meredith" (Ford), 426 
Jefferson, Thomas, 343 
"Joan of Arc" (Twain), 388 
"Joaquin et al." (Miller), 403 
"John Marvel, Assistant" (Page), 420 
"John Phoenix," 385, 388 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 53, 73, 163 
Jonson, Ben, 22 

"Journey from Patapsco to An- 
napolis, A" (Lewis), 81 
"Jumping Frog, The" (Twain), 384 
"June" (Bryant), 182 
"Jungle, The" (Sinclair), 420 
"Justice and Expediency " (Whittier), 
257 

"Kavanagh" (Longfellow), 270 
Keats, John, 338 

Kennedy, Charles Rann, 447-450 
"Kentons, The" (Howells), 422 
Kipling, Rudyard, 187 
"Knickerbocker's History of New 

York" (Irving), 117 
Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 239, 493 



5o8 



A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Knickerbocker school, 177 

Knight, Mrs. Sarah Kemble, 35-36, 83 

" Lakeside, The " (Whittier), 261 

Lanier, Sidney, 168, 349-358 

" Last of the Mohicans,The "(Cooper), 

144, 150 
"Last Leaf, The" (Holmes), 314 
"Last Taschastas, The" (Miller), 404 
"Last Walk in Autumn, The" 

(Whittier), 261 
"Latter-Day Warnings" (Holmes), 

315 
Leacock, John, 97 
" Leatherstocking " series, the 

(Cooper), 143 
"Leatherwood God, The" (Howells), 

422 
"Leaves of Grass" (Whitman), 363 
Lee, Gerald Stanley, 131 
" Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The " 

(Irving), 129 
"Leon" (Drake), 176 
" Letters from an American Farmer " 

(Crevecoeur), 59 
" Letter from a Missionary of the 

Methodist Episcopal Church, 

South," etc. (Whittier), 259 
Lewis, " Monk," 104 
Lewis, R., 81 
Liberator, The, 257, 493 
" Life on the Mississippi " (Twain), 

382 
" Life Amongst the Modocs " (Miller), 

404 
"Life of Washington, The " (Irving), 

118 
"Lifetime, A" (Bryant), 169 
" Ligeia " (Poe), 185 
"Light" (Miller), 405 
" Light of Stars, The " (Longfellow), 

270 
Lincoln, Abraham, 168, 254, 294,310, 

343. 350, 366, 385, 387, 416 
Lindsay, Vachel, 453, 474-478 
Lippiiicotf s Magazine, 493 
"Literary Importation" (Freneau), 

78 
Literary Magazine and American Reg- 
ister, The, loi 
" Literati, The " (Poe), 179, 284, 285 
LittelVs Living Age, 493 
Locke, John, 47 
London, 8, 9, 45, 46, 56, 66, 91, 93 



Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 179, 
190, 240, 252, 267-281, 293, 348, 349, 
369, 399, 414, 416, 419, 437, 453 

" Lost Occasion, The" (Whittier), 259 

" Lovers of Louisiana " (Cable), 425 

Low, Samuel, 97 

Lowell, Amy, 461, 478-482 

Lowell, James Russell, 21, 112, 118, 
151, 155, 168, 170, 179, 182, 190, 
211, 213, 252, 262, 267, 277, 282- 
298, 306, 316, 317, 325, 328, 333, 

349. 385- 419 
" Luck of Roaring Camp, The " 

(Harte), 381 
" Lyrics and Epics " (Aldrich), 331 

Macaulay, Thomas B., 11, 417 
McClure^s Magazine, 494 
" M'Fingal " (Trumbull), 71 
MacKaye, Percy, 446-447 
"Madame Delphine " (Cable), 425 
" Magnalia Christi Americana " 

(Mather), 29, 31, 32, 34 
" Mahomet and his Successors " 

(Irving), 118 
" Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, 

The " (Twain), 388 
Map of Concord (Mass.), 223 
Map of New England, 42 
"Marble Faun, The" (Hawthorne), 

241, 242, 245 
" Marble Pool, The " (Gilder), 337 
Mark Twain, 49 (note), 150, 290, 293, 

294, 362, 367, 380-395, 396, 407, 

408, 411, 412, 419, 426, 441 
"Marshes of Glynn, The" (Lanier), 

26, 354. 357-359 
Massachusetts, 5, 8 
" Massachusetts to Virginia " (Whit- 
tier), 253 
" Mason and Slidell : a Yankee 

Idyll " (Lowell), 289 
"Masque of the Red Death, The" 

(Poe), 182 
Masters, Edgar Lee, 454, 469-473 
Mather, Cotton, 28-32, 35, 47, 83, 

129 
Mather Increase, 28-31, 35, 83, 380 
Medicine, practice of, 29, 30 
"Memories" (Whittier), 261 
" Memory" (Aldrich), 331 

" Merlin " (Emerson), 213^ . 

Merry Mount, 8, 242 -" 
Metropolitan poets, 324-342 



INDEX 



509 



" Midnight Consultations, The " (Fre- 

neau), 73 
" Miles Standish, The Courtship of " 

(Longfellow), 273, 276 
Miller, Joaquin, 367, 401-410, 419 
Milton, John, 26, 47, 48, 70, 78, 80, 

165, 200, 238, 245, 254, 264, 275, 

415 
"Minister's Wooing, The" (Stowe), 

305 
Min-or, The (N. Y.), 362, 494 
Mirror, The (Reedy's, St. Louis), 470 
Mitchell, Weir, 320 
"Modern Chivalry" (Brackenridge), 

103 
"Modern Instance, A" (Howells), 

417 
" Momentous Words" (Sill), 401 
Monthly Magazine and American Re- 
view, The, loi 
Moody, WilHam Vaughn, 330, 445, 

446, 457-461 
"Moral Bully, The" (Holmes), 319 
"Morning" (Sill), 398 
" Mortal Antipathy, A" (Holmes) 313 
Morton, Mrs. Sarah Wentworth, 103 
Morton, Thomas, 8, 9, 21, 32, 83 
Motley, John Lothrop, 118 
Mowatt, Anna C. O., 95, 181 
" Mr. Britling sees it Through " 

(Wells), 72 
"MS. Found in a Bottle" (Poe), 176 
Muir, John, 229 
" Murders in the Rue Morgue, The " 

(Poe), 186 
Murray, John, 118 
Murray, John, 3d, 403 
Music, 338, 349, 351, 405, 462 
" Music Grinders, The " (Holmes), 

315 
"My Aunt" (Holmes), 315, 320 
" My First Literary Venture " (Twain), 

382 _ 
" My Life Among the Indians " (Mil- 
ler), 404 
" My Literary Passions " (Howells), 

419 
"My Own Story" (Miller), 404 
" Myself and Mine " (Whitman), 367 
" Mysterious Illness, The " (Holmes), 

312 
" Mystery of Marie Roget, The " 

(Poe), 186 
" My Study Windows " (Lowell), 289 




Nation, The, 494 

National Advocate, The, 134 

National Era, The, 302 

National Gazette, The, 77 

"Nature" (Emerson), 203 

" New English Canaaijf" (Thomas 

Morton), 8, 32 
New England Courant, The, 45, 494 
New England Magazine, The, 239, 317, 

495 

N'e%v England Review, The, 256 

" New England Tragedies " (Long- 
fellow), 273, 277 

"New Politician, The " (Gilder), 338 

New Republic, The, 496 

" New Roof, The " (Hopkinson), 70 

New York City, 45, 50, 89, 91, 100, 
no, 165, 170, 190, 222, 325, 327, 
328, 332, 334, 336, 35i> 363. 418, 444 

New York Evening Post, The, 134, 160, 
192, 495 

New York Review and Athenceum 
Magazine, The, 160, 495 

New York Tribune, The, 306 (note), 

332, 495 
"Nigger, The" (Sheldon), 94 
" Night and Day " (Lanier), 355 
" Non- Resistance " (Holmes), 319 
Norris, Frank, 432 ^ ^ 

NorthjAmerican Review, The, 159, 160, 

16^ 289, 496 
Norton, Charles Eliot, 215, 277, 290, 

292 
"Nux Postcoenatica " (Holmes), 312 

"O Captain! My Captain!" (Whit- 
man), 368 
" O Mother of a Mighty Race " 

(Bryant), 168, 170 
"Octoroon, The" (Boucicault), 94 
" Ode in Time of Hesitation " 

(Moody), 330 
Odell, Jonathan, 73 
" Old Clock on the Stairs,The " (Long- 
fellow), 272 
"Old Creole Days" (Cable), 425 
"Old Ironsides " (Holmes), 314, 319 
"Old Place, The " (Gilder), 337 
"Oldtown Folks" (Stowe), 306 
"Oliver Goldsmith" (Irving), 118 
"On a Honey Bee" (Freneau), 80 
"Ormond" (Brown), 105 
"Our Country's Call" (Bryant), 168 
" Our OldHome " (Emerson), 241, 417 



5IO A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



"Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rock- 
ing" ("Whitman), 369 
Otitlook, The, 496 
"Outre-Mer" (Longfellow), 269, 270, 

417 
Overland Monthly, The, 381, 397 
"Over the Teacups" (Holmes), 318 
Oxford University, 384 

" Pacific Poems " (Miller), 403 
Page, Thomas Nelson, 118, 412 
Parker, Theodore, 195, 196 
"Pathfinder, The" (Cooper), 144 
"Pauline Pavlovna " (Aldrich), 330 
Payne, John Howard, 91, 97, 98, 437, 

439 
Peabody, Elizabeth, 313, 314 
Peabody, Sophia, 240 
" Pearl of Orr's Island, The " (Stowe), 

306 
Pennsylvania, 45, 46 
Pennsylvania Freeman, The, 283 
Pennsylvania Gazette, The, 45, 50, 496, 

497 
Periodical editorship, 45, 72, 73, 77, 

loi, 160, 168, 173, 176, 253, 257, 

283, 327. 332, 347> 3631 397. 487-501 
Periodicals, leading nineteenth-cen- 
tury, 487-501 
Perry, Bliss, 427, 433 
" Petroleum V. Nasby," 385, 388 
Pfaff's restaurant, 328, 345 
Philadelphia, 45, 50, 91, 100, no 
Philadelphia Saturday Courier, The, 

176 
Phillips, Wendell, 313 
" Philosophy of Composition, The " 

(Poe), 180, 186 
" Physiology of Versification, The " 

(Holmes), 312 
" Pictures of Columbus" (Freneau), 76 
Pierce's Almanack, 50 
Pierce, Franklin, 240, 241 
" Pillared Arch and Sculptured 

Tower" (Aldrich), 331 
" Pilot, The " (Cooper), 144 
Pinkney, William, 65 
"Pioneer, The" (Cooper), 143, 152, 

190, 283 
Place-names, 4, 5 
" Planting of the Apple Tree, The " 

(Bryant), 169 
Plymouth, 5, 7, 8, 42 
" Pocahontas" (Custis), 94 



Poe, Edgar Allan, 108, 173-189, 242, 

343, 411,481, 482 
"Poems on Slavery" (Longfellow), 

273 
"Poems of Two Friends" (Howells- 

Piatt), 415 
" Poet of the Breakfast Table, The " 

(Holmes), 318 
" Poetic Principal, The" (Poe), 180 
Poetry, 497 

"Poetry" (Holmes), 315, 316 
" Poetry, The Nature and Elements 

of" (Stedman), 332 
Poetry, folk, i 

Poetry of the South, 343-361 
" Poets of America" (Stedman), 332 
" Political Balance, The " (Freneau), 

74, n 

" Political Justice " (Godwin), 104 
" Ponteach " (Rogers), 91, 93, 94, 96 
Poor Richard'' s Almanac, 45, 50-52, 

497 
Pope, Alexander, 47, 48, 78, 102, 163, 
164, 191, 254, 279, 316, 317, 343, 
356, 414, 416 
Popular poetry, 20-21, 263, 274, 278 
Port Folio, The, \i:)'i 
" Power of Fancy, The " (Freneau), 80 
"Power of Sympathy, The" (Mor- 
ton), 103 
"Prairie, The" (Cooper), 144, 190 
"Precaution" (Cooper), 143, 151, 153 
"Present Crisis, The" (Lowell), 283 
" President Lincoln's Burial Hymn " 

(Whitman), 366 
" Pretty Story, A" (Hopkinson), 70 
" Prince of Parthia, The " (Godfrey), 

91,92 
Princeton College, 72 
Printing and authorship, 48, 49, 381 
" Prisoner's Thought, The " (Gilder), 

338 
" Private History of a Campaign that 

Failed, The " (Twain), 383 
" Proem " (Whittier), 262 
"Progress of Balloons, The" (Fre- 
neau), 77 
" Progress of Dulness, The " (Trum- 
bull), 71, 103 
Progress in thought, 7, 128, 166, 167 
"Prophecy, A" (Hopkinson), 70 
Providence, Personal, 6, 46, 47 
Providence (R. I.), 5, 42 
" Psalm of Life, A" (Longfellow), 270 



INDEX 



511 



Puritans, 4-16, 17-26, 27-40, 41-42, 
82-83, 161, 166, 191, 194, 203, 216, 
228, 237, 245, 277, 299, 305 

Purpose novel, the, 108, 247, 303, 427 

Putnam's Magazine, 497 

" Quality of Mercy, The " (Howells), 
419 

Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne, 104 

"Raven, The" (Poe), 178, 180, 183, 

185, 186 
" RebeUion : its Cause and Conse- 
quences, The " (Lowell), 289 
"Red Rock" (Page), 348 
" Reform " (Gilder), 338 
" Remonstrance " (Lanier), 355 
Restoration, the, 27 
" Retirement " (Freneau), 79 
" Revenge of Hamish, The" (Lanier), 

355 

Revolution, Period of, 6, 56, 69-88 

" Richard Carvel " (Churchill), 426 

Richardson, Samuel, 103, 104, 418 

Richmond (Va.), 174, 176 

Ripley, Reyerend George, 196, 311 

" Rip van Winkle" (Irving), 127-129, 
306 

" Rise of Silas Lapham, The " (How- 
ells), 416, 418 

" Rising Glory of America, The " 
(Freneau), 76 

" Rival Suitors for America, The " 
(Freneau), 96 

"Robert of Lincoln" (Whittier), 169 

Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 462-466 

Rogers, Robert, 91, 93, 96 

" Roughing It " (Twain), 383 

Round Table, The, 350, 498 

Rowson, Susanna, 103 

Royalists, 5, 21 

Ruskin, John, 303 

RusselPs Magazine, 345, 498 

Sacramento Union, The, 383 

Salem, 5, 28, 34, 42, 236, 237, 238, 239, 
332 

Salmagundi Papers (Washington Irv- 
ing et al.), 116 

Saturday Club, The, 267, 332 

Saturday Evening Post, The, 498 

Saturday Press, The, 327 

" Scarlet Letter, The " (Hawthorne), 
36, 241, 242, 245 



"School for Scandal, The" (Sheri- 
dan), 95 

Scott, Sir Walter, 108, 118, 279, 405, 
406, 415, 416 

Scribner's Magazine, 499 

Scribner's Monthly, 336, 499 

" Seaweed " (Longfellow), 272 

" Self-Reliance " (Emerson), 208 

" SelHng of Joseph, The " (Sewall), 34 

Sentimentalism, 126, 162, 163, 345 

" Septimius Felton " (Hawthorne), 
241 

Sewall, Samuel, 32, 35, 65, 83, 91 

Shakespeare, William, 48, 92, 164, 
184, 238, 355, 356, 363, 387, 414, 
463, 472 

" Shaw Memorial Ode " (Aldrich), 330 

Sheldon, Edward, 94 

Shelley, Percy B., 108, 175 

Sill, Edward Rowland, 396-401 

Simms, William Gilmore, 344, 412 

" Simple Cobler of Aggawam, The " 
(Ward), 9-1 1 

Sinclair, Upton, 432 

" Singer in the Prison, The " (Whit- 
man), 368 

" Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
God " (Edwards), 42 

" Skeleton in Armor, The " (Long- 
fellow), 271 

"Sketch Book, The" (Irving), 117- 
131, 191, 403 

"Sketches New and Old" (Twain), 
382 

" Skipper Ireson's Ride " (Whittier), 

. 261 

Slavery, discussion of, 34, 65, 73, 167, 
257-259, 273 

Smith, John, 6 

Smith, Sidney, 118 

Smollett, Tobias, 106 

"Snow-Bound" (Whittier), 261, 263 

" Society and Solitude " (Emerson), 
209 

" Song of the Banner at Daybreak, 
The " (Whitman), 366 

" Song of the Chattahoochee, The " 
(Lanier), 355 

" Song of Early Autumn, A" (Gilder), 

339 
" Song of Myself" (Whitman), 368 
" Song of the South, The " (Miller), 

404 
" Songs of the Sierras " (Miller), 403 



512 A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 



" Sonnet, The " (Gilder), 339 

" South Carohna to the States of the 

North "(Hayne), 348 
Southern Litermy Messenger, The, 176, 

177, 180, 344, 499 
Southern Magazine, The, 500 
" Specimens " (Miller), 403 
Spectator, The, 47, 49, 116 
" Spring in Massachusetts " (Tho- 

reau), 230 
" Spring in New England " (Aldrich), 

■ 330 
"Spy, The" (Cooper), 143, 150 
Standish, Miles, 9 
" Statesman's Secret, The " (Holmes), 

319 
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 135, 279, 

324, 329. 331-336, 3^S^ 399> 453 
Steele, Richard, 71, 116, 343 
" Stethoscope Song, The " (Holmes), 

312, 315 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 187, 228 
" Stirrup Cup, The " (Lanier), 355, 

356 
Stoddard, Richard Henry, 324, 453 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 108, 299- 

309, 412, 416, 431 
Stowe, Reverend Calvin E., 300 
" Stricken South to the North, The " 

(Hayne), 348 
Structure, literary, 104, 150, 180, 211, 

213, 248, 249, 274, 294-296, 318, 

320, 356, 368, 369, 386 
"Summer" (Thoreau), 230 
Sumner, Charles, 273, 284, 313 
" Sun-Day Hymn, A" (Holmes), 319 
" Sundial, The " (Gilder), 337 
Superstition, 29, 30, 31, 129 
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 209 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 375 
" Symphony, The" (Lanier), 355, 356 
" System of General Geography " 

(Brown), 102 

"Tales of a Traveller" (Irving), 117 
" Tales of a Wayside Inn " (Long- 
fellow), 273 
" Tamerlane and Other Poems " (Poe), 

175 
Tatler, The, 116 
Taylor, Bayard, 118, 181, 277, 324, 

350, 385, 431 
Tennyson, Alfred, 260, 274, 275, 333, 

416, 453 



"Terrestrial Paradise, The," 271 

Thacher, Anthony, 6 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 249, 

416, 418, 423 
" Thanatopsis " (Bryant), 22, 26, 161, 

163, 182, 357, 358 
" Thistledown " (Gilder), 337 
Thomas, Augustus, 439, 440-442, 444 
Thoreau, Henry David, 190, 191, 195, 

196, 200, 221-235, 244, 252, 311, 

364 
" Three Memorial Poems " (Lowell), 

289 
Ticknor, George, 314, 346 
Ticknor and Fields, 288, 314 
"Tiger Lilies" (Lanier), 349, 350 
Timrod, Henry, 168, 176, 345-347 
"To a Caty-did" (Freneau), 80 
"To Canaan" (Holmes), 319 
" To Have and to Hold" (Johnston), 

426 
"To Helen" (Poe), 179, 184, 185 
" To Sir Toby," 77 
"To a Waterfowl" (Bryant), 162, 182 
Token, The, 239 
Tolstoi, Lyof, 217, 419 
"Tom Sawyer" (Twain), 382 
" Tool, The " (Gilder), 338 
Topics and Problems, 15, 26, 39, 58, 

67, 68, 87, 88, 99, 109, 139-140, 156, 

157, 172, 189, 219, 234, 250, 266, 

280, 297, 309, 322, 341, 361, 378, 

395> 409 
"Tramp Abroad, A" (Twain), 384 
Transcendentalism, 194, 195 
Transcendentalists, 190-197, 431 
"Traveler from Altruria, A" (How- 
ells), 419, 420-422 
Trollope, Anthony, 106, 418 
Trumbull, John, 71, 72, 85, 103, iii, 

119, 141, 164 
" Turn of the Balance, The " (Whit- 
lock), 420 
"Twice-Told Tales" (Hawthorne), 

240, 241 
Tyler, Royall, 91, 94, 103 

"Ulalume" (Poe), 179, 183, 184, 185 

" Uncle Remus, his Songs and Say- 
ings " (Harris), 425 

"Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Stowe), 7,2r^ 
94, 299, 300-304 

University of California, 397 

University of Missouri, 384 



889 W 



INDEX 



513 



University of Pennsylvania, 45 
University of Virginia, 174, 344 
Untermeyer, Louis, 462 
"Unwritten History, Paquita" (Mil- 
ler), 404 
"Urania" (Holmes), 315, 316 

"Vale! America" (Miller), 403 
"Venetian Life" (Howells), 417 
"Verse, The Science of English" 

(Lanier), 350 
"Victor and Vanquished" (Long- 
fellow), 273 
"Victorian Anthology, A" (Sted- 

man), 332 
"Victorian Poets" (Stedman), 332 
"Violet, The" (Gilder), 337 
Virginia City Enterprise, The, 383 
"Vision of Poesy, A" (Drake), 176 
"Visionof Sir Launfal,The" (Lowell), 

284 
"Voice of the Pine, The" (Gilder), 

339 
"Voyager, The" (Gilder), 338 
"Voyages and Discoveries of the 

Companions of Columbus, The " 

(Irving), 117 

"Waiting, The" (Whittier), 260 

"Walden" (Thoreau), 224, 232 

"Walden Pond," 224-227 

Wallace, Lew, 108 

Walpole, Horace, 104 

Ward, Nathaniel, 9-1 1, 21, 83, 380 

Ware, Reverend Henry, 207 

Warner, Charles Dudley, 384 

Warren, Mercy, 97 

Washington (D. C), no 

W.ishington, George, in, 118, 127 

"Way to Wealth, The" (Franklin), 51 

Webster, Daniel, 259, 301, 319 

" Week on the Concord and Merri- 

mac Rivers, A" (Thoreau), 224 
Wells, H. G., 187 
West Point Military Academy, 174, 

176 



Western Messenger, The, 500 

Western Monthly Magazine, The, 300, 

500 
Wharton, Edith, 428, 429 
"Whisperers, The" (Gilder), 338 
White, Kirke, 161 
Whitlock, Brand, 118, 420, 432 
Whitman, Walt, 49 (note), 137, 173, 

232, 279, 295, 328, 334, 339. 340, 

362-379, 405. 407- 408. 414. 419' 

453 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 73, 114, 

130, 168, 170, 190, 252-266, 288, 

302,304, 319.331.348, 453 
"Wieland" (Brown), 104 
Wigglesworth, Michael, 18-21, 25 
" Wild Honeysuckle, The " (Freneau), 

80 
William and Mary College, 89 
"Williams, Caleb" (Godwin), 104,105, 

106 
Williams, Roger, 11, 21, 83, 203 
Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 93, 175, 178, 

328 
"Winter" (Thoreau), 230 
Witchcraft, 28, 29 
Woman, estimate of, ic-ii, 23-24, 

95. 148, 433 
"Woman's Reason, A" (Howells), 

417 
"Woman's Thought, A" (Gilder), 

339 

"Wonders of the Invisible World, 
The" (Cotton Mather), 29 

Woolman, John, 65 

Wordsworth, William, 165, 202, 369 

"World of Cliance, The" (Howells), 
419 

"Wreck of Rivermouth, The" (Whit- 
tier), 261 

Yale College, 141, 334, 384, 396, 397, 

398 
Yale Review, 499 
"Year's Life, A" (Lowell), 283 
"Yellow Violet, The" (Bryant), 162 













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